Of body snatchers and cyberpunks - Georg-August

Transcription

Since its beginnings, science fiction has served as an intellectual playground where pressing issues such as scientific and
technological progress, population growth, nuclear power, environmental protection, or genetic engineering have been
projected onto different times and spaces in order to warn about inherent dangers, offer solutions, or to simply speculate
about and experiment with the future. In the summer term of 2009, students from the University of Göttingen and the
University of Siegen participated in two parallel courses entitled “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American Science
Fiction Film from the 1950s to the Present” and met for an undergraduate conference in Göttingen where they presented
and discussed their research on American science fiction film together with Eric S. Rabkin, professor at the University of
Michigan (USA) and an international expert in the field. The result of this project is the present volume of twelve student
essays that were first presented at the conference, and then selected and revised for publication. Considering science
fiction film as an essential element of American popular culture, the essays analyze and discuss the films Invasion of
the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968), Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973), The
Matrix (Wachowski, 1999), and Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002) against the background of social, political, cultural,
and/or ecological developments in their contemporary U.S. societies. The introductory essay outlines the theoretical,
methodological, and didactic considerations that informed the planning and teaching processes of the course format
and the conference. The collection also features an autobiographical essay by Eric S. Rabkin in which he reflects on his
personal experiences and lifelong fascination with science fiction films.
Sonja Georgi and Kathleen Loock (eds.)
Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks
Student Essays on American Science Fiction Film
Göttinger Schriften zur Englischen Philologie
Band 5
Sonja Georgi and Kathleen Loock (eds.) Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks
2011
ISBN: 978-3-941875-91-3
ISSN: 1868-3878
Universitätsdrucke Göttingen
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erschienen in der Reihe der Universitätsdrucke
im Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2011
Sonja Georgi
and Kathleen Loock (eds.)
Of Body Snatchers
and Cyberpunks
Student Essays on
American Science Fiction Film
Göttinger Schriften zur
Englischen Philologie, Band 5
Universitätsverlag Göttingen
2011
Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über
<http://dnb.ddb.de> abrufbar.
Address of the Editors
Kathleen Loock
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Englische Philologie
Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3
37073 Göttingen
E-Mail: [email protected]
Dr. des. Sonja Georgi
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
FB 05: Department of English and Linguistics/American Studies
Staudinger Weg 9
55128 Mainz
E-Mail: [email protected]
This work is protected by German Intellectual Property Right Law.
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Satz und Layout: Frauke Reitemeier
Umschlaggestaltung: Franziska Lorenz
Titelabbildung: © iStockphoto.com/benignocom
© 2011 Universitätsverlag Göttingen
http://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de
ISBN: 978-3-941875-91-3
ISSN: 1868-3878
Contents
Introduction
Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: Teaching American Science Fiction Film
(SONJA GEORGI / KATHLEEN LOOCK) .................................................................. 13
Part I: The Look and Sound of Science Fiction Film
“There was a world once, you punk”: Visual Subversion
in Fleischer’s Soylent Green (JÖRN PIONTEK) ........................................................... 41
“Like Alice in Wonderland”: Special Effects in
The Matrix (DENNIS EDELMANN) ............................................................................. 51
“What are you doing, Dave?”: The Confrontation of Dave Bowman and HAL
9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (FABIAN GUMBRECHT)........... 63
Part II: Social and Political Commentaries
“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” as Social Reflection? The Success of the
Sequence Among Young Adults of the Counterculture (NIKLAS FRANZEN) ... 75
It Used to Be a Man’s World: Manhood and Masculinity in
Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (MANFRED ALEXANDER MÜLLER).... 87
“What keeps us safe also keeps us free”: State Control vs. Personal
Liberty in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and the Present-Day
United States (PHILIPP STÜCKRATH) ........................................................................ 99
Religion in Soylent Green (MORITZ EMMELMANN).......................................................111
Part III: Themes and Motifs of Science Fiction Films
The Doppelgänger Motif in Science Fiction Film (DENNIS KOGEL / IRIS
SCHÄFER) .....................................................................................................................125
“Can you see?”: The Importance of Vision and the Eye Motif in Steven
Spielberg’s Minority Report (STEFANIE SCHWARZ) .................................................143
Becky Driscoll as femme fatale? Elements of film noir in Don Siegel’s
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (SOLVEIG BURFEIND) ................................................151
Part IV: (De)Constructing Bodies and Identities
Human Monsters: The Function of the Horror Motif in Don Siegel’s
Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Its Remakes (BENJAMIN RYAN ULONSKA) ....161
Why Does the One Only Exist in Cyberspace? Obsolescence of the
Body, Construction of a Virtual Subject and the Question of Control
in The Matrix (GINA ZIEBELL) .................................................................................173
Epilogue
The Creature from Brooklyn: My Life and Science Fiction
Film (ERIC S. RABKIN) ..............................................................................................187
List of Contributors ..........................................................................................................195
„Göttinger Schriften zur Englischen Philologie“: Zum Konzept
der Reihe (FRAUKE REITEMEIER) ...........................................................................199
Acknowledgments
The editors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the U.S. Consulate General Hamburg and the committee for the allocation of tuition fees (Studienkommission der Philosophischen Fakultät Göttingen), and the Department of Linguistics, Literature and Media Science of the University of Siegen toward the
organization of the joint undergraduate conference “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American Science Fiction Films from the 1950s to the Present” with
students from both the University of Göttingen and the University of Siegen that
took place in Göttingen from July 3 to July 5, 2009. Special thanks go to Daniel
Stein and Rebecca Scorah for their help with the conference organization. For
their valuable comments and suggestions regarding the introductory essay, we
would also like to thank Carola Surkamp and Daniel Stein.
We are further indebted to Prof. Eric S. Rabkin. Not only did he come all the
way from Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA) to join us in Göttingen as an expert in the
field of science fiction studies. He enriched the conference with his wonderful
keynote lecture and his great wealth of knowledge. We are delighted that he contributed an original essay to the present volume. Needless to say, we thank all the
students from Siegen and Göttingen who participated in the conference and made
it a successful event. All students who eventually contributed to this volume deserve our thanks for the enthusiasm and hard work they invested in this project.
Introduction
Sonja Georgi / Kathleen Loock
Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks:
Teaching American Science Fiction Film
I
In 2006, the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) held its annual
conference at the University of Göttingen. The conference topic, “American Studies as Media Studies,” paid tribute to the different turns that have (re)shaped the
field of literary and cultural studies after the linguistic, historical, and cultural turns
of the 1970s and 1980s.1 Throughout the past two decades, new theoretical and
methodological approaches have emerged that take into account different contemporary and historical mediations of (trans)national or cultural representations
and have led to an expansion of American Studies as a discipline. In accordance
with the overall topic, the conference program challenged the traditional hegemony of the printed word by including papers that focused on visual, audio-visual,
and audio formats as well as on new electronic media. In other words, the conference “American Studies as Media Studies” came to terms with the fact that we live
1
For a discussion of recent theoretical turns in literary and cultural studies see BachmannMedick.
14
in an increasingly audio/visual environment that is largely influenced by different
kinds of new media.2
Our world is no longer governed by the logocentrism that has formed the basis of Western thinking: The written word has been losing its monopoly in our
everyday lives because other semiotic channels – taking the forms of images,
sounds, and spectacles – increasingly attract our attention (Seidl 2). Media and
technology – the sight and sound of radio, television, film, music, photos, paintings, the Internet, computer games, but also print media such as magazines, newspapers, and comic books – have become an inescapable part of our existence
(Kellner 1-2). Along these lines, Eckart Voigts-Virchow rightly states that “[w]e
live in a thoroughly ‘mediatized’ world, a social and cultural environment which is
permeated by the media, and more specifically electronic media” (5). In addition,
Frank Kelleter and Daniel Stein have drawn attention to the major role the United
States play in our media culture:
If we find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between what is universal
and what is local – even between what is virtual and what is material – this
has much to do with the presence of the media in our lives. And one cannot help but add: it has to do with the presence, both virtual and material,
of the United States of America in our lives. (ix)
American Studies as a discipline provides tools to read not only contemporary but
also historical non-verbal texts in order to (re)consider their cultural work both inside and outside the United States. The new focus on media other than the printed
text is reflected in the American Studies programs at German universities. Apart
from lectures and courses that deal with works from the traditional literary canon
– which has already been expanded to include American literatures by women and
minority writers – American Studies curricula now also offer courses on popular
music, comic books and graphic novels, television series, and, of course, on film.3
American popular culture and mass media, it seems, fulfill at least one of the
essential criteria Peter Freese lists for the selection of classroom texts or topics:
“intrinsic motivational power” (193). Films in particular are an attractive and – to
a certain degree – familiar medium for students, both at school and university
(Surkamp, “Teaching Films” 3). But this is not the only reason for teaching films.
What is more important – especially on the level of academic American Studies
2
3
The conference program is available online; see American Studies as Media Studies: 53. Jahrestagung
der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien. See also the conference volume American Studies as Media Studies, edited by Frank Kelleter and Daniel Stein.
Voigts-Virchow somewhat critically assesses the number and contents of media-related courses
in English and American Literary and Cultural Studies at German, Austrian, and Swiss universities from 1999 to 2004 (9-13). He laments “the sad fact that media studies have not been fully
absorbed” into university curricula, even though, recent introductions to literary studies “have
featured chapters on the media or at least on film” (11).
15
directed at future teachers – is the necessity for critical media literacy. Douglas Kellner believes that “McLuhan to the contrary, today’s media-saturated younger generations are not naturally media-critical or truly media-literate” (335). Indeed,
many students of American Studies continue to understand and experience films
along the lines of their everyday (and hence often unreflected) contact with Hollywood cinema or U.S. American television programs. American Studies curricula
must therefore address precisely this unreflectedness and teach how “to read moving images as well as to deal competently and critically with them” (Surkamp,
“Cultural Approach” 15-16).
In his book Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern
and the Postmodern, Kellner observes that rejecting or neglecting mass culture, as the
Frankfurt School did, might be inappropriate today, because “media culture is
here to stay and, if anything, its products are becoming increasingly popular and
powerful” (335). He is further convinced that a “mindless celebration of media
culture, without cultivating methods to promote critical media literacy, is equally
pernicious” (335) and thus comes to the following conclusion:
[I]t is important to pursue a project of developing a critical media pedagogy
and to teach ourselves and others how to critically decode media messages
and to trace their complex range of effects. It is important to be able to
perceive the various ideological voices and codes in the artefacts of our
common culture and to distinguish between hegemonic ideologies and
those images, discourses, and texts that subvert the dominant ideologies.
(335)
Similarly, Carola Surkamp’s research on the teaching methodology of film stresses
that the knowledge about film is essential for the orientation in a media society,
“because filmic devices have a deep impact on our viewing habits, the formation
of our opinions … and the perception we have of other cultures” (“Cultural Approach” 28).
In this larger context, we conceived the idea of teaching parallel undergraduate
courses on American science fiction film at the University of Göttingen and the
University of Siegen that were to end with a joint conference. In the summer term
of 2009, students from Göttingen and Siegen watched, analyzed, and discussed six
science fiction films from the 1950s to the present; they gave papers in class and
at the joint conference, wrote term papers, and continuously revised their work.
One of the primary goals of this joint format was to provide students with an
alternative learning experience that not only increases their motivation but also
accentuates their academic research and performance skills. The final result of the
undertaking is the present volume of student essays.
In the following, we will outline the theoretical, methodological, and didactic
considerations that informed the planning and teaching processes of these two
courses and the conference – considerations that should also give more general
16
insights into new and/or different ways of teaching at university level. More precisely, in Part II, we will discuss the question of why American science fiction film
provides an appropriate genre to teach critical media literacy and address a number of important issues both from filmic and cultural studies perspectives. We
further elaborate on the choice of six specific films released in the decades from
the 1950s to the 2000s. In Part III of this essay, we will then address the course
format, organization, and content as well as the didactic approaches and methodology. We will deal with the question of how to teach film in general and science
fiction film in particular in an American Studies context. Finally, Part IV briefly
presents the structure and content of this volume.
II
Science fiction film as an essential element of American popular culture provides a
valuable source for teaching media literacy in the American Studies classroom.
The recent productions of Hollywood blockbusters and film remakes such as War
of the Worlds (Spielberg, 2005), I am Legend (Lawrence, 2007), and The Day the Earth
Stood Still (Derrickson, 2008) attest to the continuing relevance of science fiction
in contemporary mainstream culture. At the same time, science fiction allows
students to investigate reigning attitudes toward social, political, cultural, and/or
ecological developments in U.S. society by “embedding films in their historical
and socio-cultural context as well as in the contemporary discourses in which they
partake” (Surkamp, “Cultural Approach” 28). Since its beginnings, science fiction
has served as an intellectual playground where pressing issues (such as scientific
and technological progress, population growth, nuclear power, environmental
protection, genetic engineering) have been projected onto different times and
spaces in order to warn about inherent dangers, offer solutions, or simply speculate about and experiment with the future. In this function, they can provide insights into U.S. American cultural imaginaries. When analyzed as cultural products, science fiction films can also shed light on U.S. American cultural realities
and enable a further understanding of particular historical and political contexts.
Most consumers of popular culture are to a certain degree familiar with science
fiction and recognize specific generic elements and conventions. Or, as Jay P.
Telotte writes, sporadic science fiction viewers and fans alike are able to formulate
an amateur definition of science fiction: “Anyone who has watched even a few
science fiction films, episodes of a Flash Gordon serial, or several episodes of the
Star Trek or Babylon 5 television series, for example, would probably argue that he
or she could, with little hesitation, decide if a certain work belongs within the
science fiction category” (17). This assumption is based on the idea that science
fiction films share what Telotte calls “particular hallmarks, visual icons, that, over
the course of many years, have helped constitute a common signature that cultural
consensus or historical use has by now assigned to the genre” (17). The “common
17
signature,” or “language,” of science fiction film that Telotte describes in his book
Science Fiction Film includes character types, situations, and settings as well as tools
and weapons – to name but a few central filmic devices (17).
As a consequence, an undergraduate course on American science fiction film
from the 1950s to the present (such as the one we taught at the University of Göttingen and the University of Siegen) can draw on the students’ familiarity with
U.S. American popular culture as well as on their familiarity with science fiction
films and literature – albeit without taking their media or genre skills for granted.
The students’ prior knowledge of medium and content should only be the starting
point for a more theoretical and historically guided approach to science fiction
film.4
Eric S. Rabkin situates the beginnings of science fiction in the romantic period
and defines it as an umbrella term for literature that “both warns against and applauds the advance of science and technology” (“Science Fiction” 19). As a genre,
science fiction is both characterized by its “ambivalence toward the institutions of
science and technology” and its interest in the encounter with the other, often in
the form of new technologies, worlds, and beings (19). According to Rabkin, science fiction in general is concerned with the dangers of science and technology,
yet at the same time it also celebrates the unlimited potentials of science and technology (19). Today, the beginning of the genre is often linked to the publication of
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818 because the novel reflects many of the changes
from an agricultural to an industrial society based on recent scientific findings.5
When discussing the further development of the genre, it is important to differentiate (1) between science fiction literature and film and (2) between European and
American seminal science fiction works. With regard to the first point, one could
state that thematically, science fiction film and literature share their concern with
contemporary scientific and technological developments. Yet, Vivian Sobchack
writes, “SF film is less contemplative and analytic and more spectacular and kinetic than its literary counterparts” (“American Science Fiction Film” 263). Concerning the second observation, Rabkin postulates a major difference between
European and American science fiction with reference to their attitudes towards
the exploration of space and the crossing of ever new frontiers. According to
Rabkin, in European science fiction, the (usually male) hero takes the role of the
adventurer who upon meeting the alien turns into himself and eventually, in the
tradition of the Robinsonade, returns home. The American science fiction hero on
4
5
The question of what science fiction actually is and which works qualify as science fiction seems
to be characteristic for the genre and acclaimed scholars of the field like Darko Suvin, Brian
Aldiss, and Robert Scholes and Eric S. Rabkin advocate different approaches to, and definitions,
of the genre. In the introductory sessions of the course, students could be shown a selection of
definitions of the genre and asked to compare these approaches to science fiction (literature)
with their own ideas of what constitutes science fiction.
However, Frankenstein is also, or foremost, regarded as a classic work of the romantic period in
Britain and of the gothic genre (Maxwell 7). See also Rabkin, Brian Aldiss, and Edward James.
18
the other hand, following the tradition of the Western, crosses the frontier with
the aim to change and improve the new territory (“American Science Fiction Film:
No Final Frontiers”). About the cultural significance of the science fiction genre
for American society in the twentieth century Rabkin remarks:
Just as a mushroom cloud and a single footprint on the moon are this era’s
linked icons of despair and hope, so science fiction in both warning against
arrogance and proselytizing for perpetual discovery embraces our deep ambivalence toward the institutions of science and technology, their products,
and their effects on humanity. (“Science Fiction” 19)
Following this observation, we argue that American science fiction has specific
themes that derive from, and only make sense within, specific American historical,
cultural, and social contexts. The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, for example, resonates in American science fiction of the
twentieth century in discourses on a growing U.S.-based global capitalist system,
while the exploration of new territories takes the exploration of the New World as
its model. In this context, Brian Aldiss notes that even though “[t]he origins and
inspirations for science fiction lie outside of the United States … [s]cience fiction
… is now largely – in emphasis and in fact – an American art form, coinciding
with a time of great technological evolution and with the rise of the USA to superpower status” (14). Science fiction, in other words, has become an American
genre with a global audience.
Accordingly, the themes, settings, and motifs of science fiction films are defined by specific American cultural circumstances. Therefore, an undergraduate
course in an American Studies context can provide a historical overview of
American science fiction films on the one hand, and enable engaged readings of
each individual film not only as a reflection of important political, cultural, and
social issues of their times but also as “an active force in its own right which is
involved in the actual generation of ways of thinking and of attitudes” (Nünning
360) on the other. This is important because, as Carola Surkamp writes, “the
choice of topics and formal properties not only reflects, but also influences the
cultural issues of a given period” (“A Cultural Approach” 18). As a consequence,
she further explains, “the analysis of the means of representation employed in a
film can give insight into the cultural knowledge, the conceptions of reality and
the ways of thinking of the society in which it was produced” (18). Surkamp’s
assumptions are based on the complex relationship between fictional texts and
their contexts which she describes as follows:
Within culture-oriented and context-sensitive literary studies, literary texts
and films are not seen as closed systems and static products, but they are
rather conceptualized as being closely related to reality. … However, this
does not mean that films simply reflect reality. It is rather the case that they
stand in a close dynamic interrelation with the reality outside the film,
19
which is critically questioned by their choice of topics as well as formal
means. On the one hand, films select a few of the diverse events and experiences of a multi-layered reality and present them with the aesthetic
means of the audiovisual medium. … On the other hand, films also influence the discussion on specific cultural themes in various discourses outside
the medium: they gain productive character through the fictional interpretation of culture-specific experiences. (17-18)
In accordance with Surkamp’s claim that “films should also be analysed with regard to their function as a medium that creates cultural meaning” (18), an undergraduate course on science fiction film obviously allows to link film studies learning objectives and the cultural studies perspective prevalent in the academic field
of American Studies in a fruitful way.6
With this idea in mind, it makes sense to follow a chronological order when
choosing the films that are to be watched and/or discussed in class, e.g. one representative film for each decade starting from the 1950s and ending with the
2000s. If the overall course objective, then, is to map and analyze American culture from the 1950s to the present through science fiction films, the selection of
one film for each decade must be influenced by two considerations: (1) The films
must be key works of the science fiction genre. (2) At the same time, the films
have to reflect specific American cultural discourses of their periods. In other
words, the six films to be selected as representative of the six decades covered in
the course should lend themselves to analyses from a science fiction genre perspective as well as from a cultural studies perspective. As such, they can offer
further understanding of the particular historical and political contexts of their
respective periods.
The twentieth century saw a variety of American science fiction film productions. Despite this diversity, one can find recurring topics and themes: the increasing development of new technologies, a shift from an industrial economy to a
globalized mass consumer and information society, growing influences of computer technology on humans and their everyday lives, and the encounter with the
“other,” the new, or the “alien” potentially made possible by technological inventions and advances in the fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering. Although these topics have been of varying relevance in public debates throughout
the last six decades, and their prevalence in science fiction films as well as the
images and rhetoric used to portray them have changed, they can be regarded as
the underlying themes in many science fiction films of that time period. For the
course “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American Science Fiction Film from
the 1950s to the Present,” the syllabus listed the following six films: Don Siegel’s
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968),
6
On cultural approaches in American Studies and the foreign language classroom see also Delanoy and Volkmann, as well as Bach and Donnerstag. On media use in this context see Donnerstag and Volkmann.
20
Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green (1973), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), the
Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix (1999), and Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report
(2002). In the next part of this section, we give a brief overview of each decade
from the 1950s to the present in terms of their cultural climate, we present the
central science fiction films of each period, and explain why we chose the six films
above for the course.
The 1950s marked the beginning of the Cold War. After the end of World War
II, communism was the new enemy and developments in science and technology
fueled fears of potential nuclear contamination. Within science fiction, the 1950s
are also the starting point for American science fiction film as a genre, as Vivian
Sobchack writes (“American Science Fiction Film” 263). Productions such as
Irving Pichel’s Destination Moon (1950), which was based on a novel by Robert A.
Heinlein, Byron Haskin’s The War of the Worlds (1953), and George Pal’s The Time
Machine (1960), both of which were adapted from novels by H.G. Wells, established the genre (Booker 4-7). Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – a
classic alien invasion film – seems most appropriate for a case study of this decade
because it can be analyzed both as an allegory about the fear of communist infiltration in the wake of McCarthyism and as commentary on domestic issues such
as changing gender roles in post-war American middle-class society.
The 1960s were influenced by two important events: the space program as a
product of Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union
and the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Both Sobchack and Marvin
Keith Booker observe a decline in science fiction film productions during this
period. “The decade’s emphasis on ‘relevance,’ and the clear importance of such
phenomena as the anti-war movement, the Civil Rights movement, and the
women’s movement, made SF film seem frivolous to many,” Booker explains the
recession of the American science fiction film in the 1960s (12). Yet the genre also
began to “strive for artistic seriousness” (12). Franklin Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes
(1968) and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb (1964) are among the science fiction films that reflected the cultural
discourses of the period (Roberts, The History of Science Fiction 267; Sobchack,
“American Science Fiction Film” 266). We decided to screen Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) because it engages in public discourses about the U.S.
space program and the counterculture movement in an original way. Featuring an
artificial intelligence and an advanced alien race, it contemplates human evolution
and can be read as a film that both celebrates and questions the technological progress. In terms of film analysis, 2001 is also a hallmark of special effects.
A growing social and political skepticism in the aftermath of the Civil Rights
and other liberation movements fostered by the Watergate scandal (1972-4) and
the end of the Vietnam War (1975) characterized American social, political, and
cultural debates of the 1970s. Booker writes that because of its escapist potential,
science fiction films experienced hitherto unknown popularity during that decade
(14). Films like Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and George
21
Lucas’ Star Wars (both released in 1977) refashioned the adventure story “in which
good triumphed over evil,” thereby meeting conservative viewer demands (13-4).
In contrast to Booker, Sobchack sees the science fiction film of the 1970s not as
escapist but as “[m]ore adult, socially relevant, and mainstream than it had been
previously, … dealing with overpopulation, food shortages, urban blight, and
aging” (“American Science Fiction Film” 267). Richard Fleischer’s maybe lesserknown Soylent Green from 1973 lends itself to analysis because it is one of the science fiction films of the decade that depicts a dystopian view of American urban
future. At the same time, the film reflects on environmental concerns, discourses
on globalization, and the class and gender struggles of the decade.
The 1980s were marked by economic deregulation and political conservatism –
combined in the term Reaganomics. Other current debates revolved around multiculturalism and advances in computer technology. Films like Spielberg’s E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial (1982) still used the escapist component popular during the 1970s
in order to address mainly young viewers (Booker 14). The 1980s were also the
years of the first Star Trek feature film sequels, whose eleven films span the 1990s
as well as the first decade of the new millennium. Like the Star Wars franchise, Star
Trek became one of the largest science fiction commercial enterprises in the
United States and abroad. Rejecting the boundaries of high and low culture as well
as rigid genre distinctions, postmodernism emerged as the predominating critical
theory of the time, and it exerted a substantial influence on the science fiction film
as well. Films such as Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) extensively employ postmodernist aesthetics and themes, and academic critics such as
Fredric Jameson received them as the “paradigmatic cultural expression of postmodernism” (Booker 15), as films that “symbolically mark a transition” in the
depiction of the other, the alien, in the science fiction genre (Jameson 140). Other
examples of the postmodern influence on science fiction film are James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984) and Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987), which both
feature cyborgs: beings that are partly human and partly machine. The noir-science
fiction film Blade Runner, which is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), became part of the syllabus because it is generally
regarded a key icon of the postmodern period in science fiction filmmaking and is
– with its dark, rainy and overpopulated cityscape – one of the most visually influential science fiction films. Contemplating what Booker terms “the distinction
between humans and the products of their technology” (15) in the form of cyborgs, the film addresses many aspects of the contemporary condition of Western
societies, such as fragmentation and questions of identity, alienation of the middle
and working classes in the process of globalization, and the fear that machines will
eventually fully replace human workers. Moreover, Blade Runner takes a critical
perspective on the system of global capitalism and postmodern culture.
The 1990s were characterized by the end of the Cold War and by the beginning of the so-called new world order of political unipolarity as well as by the
22
increasing significance of computer technology and the Internet in all walks of life.
Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996) promotes a political discourse of a
new world order in which America saves the world from aliens, who in the film
are the worlds’ new enemies (Booker 17). Furthermore, virtual reality was no
longer a space confined to science fiction in films such as Robert Longo’s Johnny
Mnemonic (1995) and Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998), but had also found its way
into the 1990s everyday culture. On the one hand, Andy and Larry Wachowski’s
The Matrix (1999) – which served as our case study for the 1990s – comments on
virtual reality and the “reliability of perception” (Rabkin, “American Science Fiction Film: No Final Frontiers”). On the other hand, its entire production depended on recent advances in computer technology. By applying Jean Baudrillard’s theory Simulacra and Simulation – which the French philosopher describes as
“the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal” (1) – The
Matrix and its sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (both 2003)
partake in popular and critical discourses on the information technologies of the
decade.
The first years of the new millennium were marked by the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001, and George W. Bush’s subsequent “war on terrorism.” Increasing calls for state action that relied on new surveillance methods are taken up
in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002). We selected this film, which is based
on a short story of the same title by Philip K. Dick, for the 2000s because it portrays a future scenario where everyday technologies such as instant messaging,
closed circuit television, and satellite communication are used and abused in the
name of global commerce and crime prevention. On a philosophical level, the film
asks questions about the “reliability of knowledge,” as Rabkin has pointed out
(“American Science Fiction Film: No Final Frontiers”). In terms of successful film
productions, the first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed the triumph of
fantasy films over science fiction remakes, of which Spielberg’s War of the Worlds
(2005) and Francis Lawrence’s I am Legend (2007) – an adaptation of Richard
Matheson’s 1954 novel and a remake of Ubaldo Ragona’s The Last Man on Earth
(1964) and Boris Sagal’s The Omega Man (1971) – are probably the most well
known examples. This increasing turn to earlier films can be read as a sign of a
recent nostalgia of the science fiction genre (Booker 23-5). In terms of box office
success, the epic fantasy screen adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
by Peter Jackson (2001-3) and of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia by Andrew
Adamson (2005) as well as the Harry Potter film adaptations have met the demands
of contemporary viewers who are turning away from depictions of technologysaturated societies to worlds far away and purely imaginary.
This brief overview of American science fiction films since the 1950s has
sought to show that the six films selected for the course “Of Body Snatchers and
Cyberpunks” are among the cornerstones of the genre. They can be watched and
analyzed as exemplary cultural products of their respective decades because they
engage in popular discourses through their depictions of current events and de-
23
velopments. In other words, the specific topics these films discuss and their distinct cinematic realizations “give insight into the cultural knowledge, the conceptions of reality and the ways of thinking of the society in which [they were] produced” (Surkamp, “Cultural Approach” 18). However, they present only one way
of studying science fiction film and approaching American culture since the 1950s.
Other films could be selected for this purpose just as well, possibly providing
similar or new insights. What all six films on the syllabus share is that the various
issues discussed in the works as well as their roles within American science fiction
film may become fully apparent to the young non-American viewers once they
analyze the means of representation and research the historical backgrounds of
the periods in relation to the development of the genre.
III
The American Studies division at the University of Göttingen has a strong record
in offering joint courses with other German universities or departments that are
usually conducted in parallel sessions with identical or similar syllabi. At the end of
the term, the students meet for a common symposium where they have the opportunity to deliver the papers they have worked on during the term and to discuss their research with peers and international scholars invited for the occasion.7
These joint courses have been offered as Hauptseminare, i.e. they were geared toward advanced students of American Studies and English Philology. In most
cases, the student papers delivered at the common symposia were astonishingly
full-fledged academic contributions. The discussions revealed that the students
had acquired an in-depth knowledge of the topic, which prompted them to formulate challenging questions and interesting comments. Apparently, the course
format – and the symposium in particular – not only helped to create or increase
7
Over the last decade, Frank Kelleter – chair of American Studies at the University of Göttingen
– has offered and organized the following joint courses and corresponding symposia: “Sexuality
and Seduction in Early America” (summer term 2004) with Ruth Mayer from the University of
Hanover; “Hybrid Literatures, Hybrid Cultures” (summer term 2005) with Manfred Engelbert,
and Annette Paatz from the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Göttingen; “Authors: Theories of Literary Authorship (and American Case Studies)”
(winter term 2005/2006) with Ruth Mayer from the University of Hanover; “Slavery and the
Southern Plantation Romance” (summer term 2006) with Ulrich Mücke from the Department
of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Göttingen; “The McSweeney’s School
of Fiction” (summer term 2008) with Laura Bieger from the John F. Kennedy Institute for
North American Studies in Berlin.
Furthermore, Barbara Buchenau from the American Studies Program and Carola Hecke from
the Teaching Methodology Program at the University of Göttingen have organized the following joint student conference “¿Postethnicity? – Identity Politics Reconsidered: North American
Theories and Literary Practices in and outside of German Multicultural Classrooms” (summer
term 2007). They have published an article on their teaching concept in the German-language
journal Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht; see Buchenau and Hecke.
24
the learners’ motivation but also affected the quality of the students’ academic
performance. This was not only true for the more advanced students of the
Hauptstudium but also for students in their first and second years. In the summer
term of 2008, students of two Proseminare offered by the English Department of
the University of Göttingen met for an undergraduate conference on the Gothic
novel,8 and here, too, the students presented excellent papers, as the more advanced students had done before them. In sum, parallel courses in combination
with joint conferences obviously inspire students to overachieve academically
both at the beginner and advanced levels.
Plans to teach parallel undergraduate courses on American science fiction film
at two different universities – the University of Siegen and the University of Göttingen – that were to culminate in a joint undergraduate conference at the end of
the term needed to draw on the experience of colleagues who had organized earlier events when deciding on the format, organization, and content as well as on the
didactic approaches and methodology of the entire undertaking. The advantages of this
teaching format are manifold: First, the participation of students and teachers
from two different university contexts creates multiperspectivity. Upon meeting
and exchanging their ideas at a joint conference, students are required to transfer,
negotiate, and possibly revise their preconceived notions and thus engage in an
active learning process. Second, in the context of the parallel courses and the joint
conference, responsibility, personal initiative, and self-organization on the part of
the students lead to better learning results and a heightened awareness of and
confidence in their own academic achievements. This is closely related to a third
point: The high motivational potential of the format signals to the students that
their work is meaningful outside the classroom. Not only are students from two
different universities interested in each others’ work. If international experts are
invited to the joint conference, and if this conference is open to the public, the
students’ academic performance gains even more importance. Finally, the learning
atmosphere in class improves with the prospect of a joint conference where results can be presented to fellow students and a critical audience.9
While at some German universities the format of joint courses in connection
with symposia or undergraduate conferences might be established and therefore
familiar to advanced students, it may yet be unknown to those who are in their
first and second years. It is therefore necessary to introduce the format to the
students and to emphasize the degree of commitment required by this timeconsuming endeavor. The appeal of the undergraduate conference can be enhanced by inviting an international expert who gives a keynote at the conference,
8
9
Stephanie Sommerfeld and Dorothea Schuller organized “Discourse, Dreams, Delusion: The
Enlightenment and the Gothic in Transatlantic Perspective” (July 4-5, 2008) as a joint undergraduate conference for their individual courses.
For advantages of the teaching format that combines parallel courses and joint conferences, see
Buchenau and Hecke.
25
attends the entire event, and participates in the discussion of the student papers.10
The students’ work and achievements during the term are thus appreciated by an
audience consisting of an expert and fellow students who engage with a diversity
of student papers. This is not only highly motivating for students but also helps to
accomplish a number of important learning objectives both inherent in the format
and specific for the topic of American science fiction film, namely:
• Critical media literacy/film literacy: As mentioned above, media awareness is essential in today’s media-saturated society. Based on a historical survey of
American science fiction films from the 1950s to the present, critical media
literacy means knowledge about, and engagement with, different filmic devices and their effects and insights into the historical, political, and cultural
contexts in which the individual films were produced and released.
• Intercultural competence: The insights students gain into the historical, political,
and cultural contexts of the science fiction films surpass, in fact, the learning objective of critical media and film literacy. They also further the students’ intercultural competences, or more precisely: their knowledge about
a specific historical, political, and/or cultural context, about the beliefs,
mindsets and world views of another culture. As students receive and process this knowledge against the background of their own experiences and
preconceived notions, it is important to actively discuss and reflect on exactly this reception process. This can be achieved with student papers, in
class discussions, and of course at the conference, where students not only
negotiate their findings with their fellow students from another university
but (if possible) also with an expert from the target culture (in our case with
a professor from an American university).
• Revising strategies: A course format in which students present their findings in
the context of an undergraduate conference at the end of the term requires
very specific preparations. Ideally, students should get the chance to present a draft version of their papers or their work in progress in class and
thus have the opportunity to revise and improve their work according to
the students’ and the teacher’s feedback. However, this would only be the
starting point of the revising process because the students should continue
to improve their papers after the conference, i.e. before handing in the term
10
It is recommendable to include (at least) one text written by the external expert into the course
readings. Furthermore, biographical information about the expert’s research and/or teaching
will raise the students’ interest in the conference and in meeting the expert.
We had the extraordinary opportunity to invite Prof. Eric S. Rabkin from the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor (USA) for the undergraduate conference “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American Science Fiction Films from the 1950s to the Present” (Göttingen, July 3-5,
2009). As an expert in the field of science fiction studies, he not only enriched the conference
with his brilliant keynote lecture “American Science Fiction Film: No Final Frontiers,” he also
contributed to the success of the event by interacting with the students, commenting on their
papers, and sharing his great wealth of knowledge.
26
papers. The academic performance at the conference itself, the presence of
fellow students from the partner university, and the participation of an external expert are important motivational factors: Students are encouraged to
apply revising strategies and consciously improve their work.
• Presentation skills: Developing and practicing presentation skills by giving an
academic talk before an audience is important for all students, whether they
will be future teachers or pursue other professional careers. These presentation skills include the command of the English language, i.e. the mastery of
an adequate register and vocabulary for an academic presentation, confidence in public speaking, and the appropriate use of handouts and/or (audio)visual support (e.g. PowerPoint).
• Media competence: In contrast to the teaching goal of critical media literacy,
media competence refers to the students’ know-how concerning the use of
PowerPoint or other presentation programs, clips and/or screenshots in
their talks (and written papers). Film analysis depends on the serious engagement with the audiovisual material. Clips and/or screenshots serve as
(audio)visual support for the students’ arguments. Hence, students must
not only learn how to recognize, analyze and interpret filmic devices in specific scenes or sequences, but also how to capture them as clips or screen
shots and how to integrate them into a presentation.
• Organizational skills: Students should be involved in the preparation of the
joint conference. They can be asked, for example, to put together their individual panels; students who act as panel chairs can prepare short presentations of the speakers and decide on how to proceed (if each presentation
is followed by a discussion or if all presentations will be discussed at the
end of the panel). Students can further be in charge of providing a place to
stay for their fellow students from the partner university. This responsibility
and personal initiative does not only practice organizational skills but also
demands interinstitutional communication.
These teaching goals should further be reflected in the organization of the parallel
courses. Joint conferences have proven to be most successful if both courses follow the same syllabus and students work with the same primary material and secondary literature. Especially discussions may turn out to be more difficult if the
students follow different syllabi in their individual courses. While a common
frame of reference might enable most advanced students to critically engage with
other student papers and the talks delivered by experts, younger students probably
still lack the skill to reflect on new insights within the short time of the discussion
sections or to apply the knowledge they have gained throughout the term to new
texts and contexts.
When teaching film and preparing the students for an undergraduate conference at the end of the term, two major questions will arise with regard to the practical organization of the course: (1) should the films be viewed in class or at
27
home? (2) Should the students present their papers in a simulated conference
situation or give a report on their work in progress? The answers to both questions depend on the number of students and sessions or on the available time
slots and the possibility to schedule additional (screening) sessions. All solutions
have their advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, viewing the films on
the syllabus in class is very time-consuming and might even require scheduling
extra screening sessions. Moreover, some students will prefer to watch the films at
home, with friends etc. A collective viewing experience, on the other hand, ensures active (as opposed to passive) watching and contributes to a productive
atmosphere in class. Additional screening sessions may test but also strengthen the
students’ commitment and foster a common bond among the participants. Inclass viewings also avoid the practical and legal problem of providing each student
with the DVDs and take into account that not all students may be able to watch
the films at home.
Presenting papers in a mock conference situation as opposed to a report on
the work in progress is likewise debatable. While the first option enables students
to practice both the academic talk and the subsequent discussion in the (relatively)
safe environment of the classroom, it can also be highly repetitive – as revised
versions of the same talks will be given at the conference – and exhausting if too
many students attend the class. Even if the presentations are no longer than ten
minutes, the students will leave less time for practicing film analysis and for discussing more general aspects of the films in class. The second option, on the other
hand, leaves more room for discussion and more time for the students’ individual
work on their presentations. However, revising strategies can only partly be applied if work in progress is presented.
Once the organization of the courses is decided upon, the content, didactic approaches and methodology gain center stage. The following questions are crucial: How
can American science fiction film be taught? And more generally: How can film
be taught in an American Studies context? Background readings on science fiction
and science fiction film are, of course, indispensable, and teachers should provide
excerpts from classic and more recent publications on the genre in literature and
film.11 Yet, above all, a course on science fiction film – as any other course on film
– must start with an introduction to film analysis. Students must be able to register
cinematic means of expression and to make use of the exact terminology for different filmic devices if they are to analyze film scenes and sequences. For a historical, political, and cultural contextualization, they must further know how to
semanticize these cinematic means of representation, and how to analyze their
functions and effects on contemporary audiences as well as on viewers today.
11
On science fiction, see Gunn, Rabkin and Scholes, Suvin, Parrinder, Seed, James and Mendlesohn as well as Roberts. On science fiction film, see the recent studies by Sobchack, Hendershot, Telotte, Booker, and Cornea, or the essay collection edited by Sanders.
28
Bernard F. Dick’s Anatomy of Film and Timothy J. Corrigan’s very accessible A
Short Guide to Writing about Film can be helpful tools for developing a vocabulary of
technical terms as well as for learning how to take notes and write about film.12 It
is useful to provide the students with a worksheet that lists selected terms and – if
possible – illustrative figures for the main categories in film analysis: narrative,
composition, camera/image, montage/editing, and sound. Having prepared their
readings on film analysis taken from Dick and Corrigan or other introductions,
students can fill in the worksheet with the respective definitions (e.g. for different
field sizes, camera angles, cuts, and transitions) and add their own annotations. It
is highly recommended to compare the students’ notes in class – in preliminary
pair work followed by class discussion – and to provide audio-visual examples for
a selected number of terms such as the shot-reverse-shot pattern, different camera
movements, match cut, jump cut, and varying forms of transitions, to name just a
few. Rüdiger Steinmetz explains and illustrates these basic terms in volumes one
and two of his Filme sehen lernen series that is equipped with additional, easy-tohandle DVDs. The newly acquired technical vocabulary – to which the students
can and should refer throughout the term – will enable them to make specific
statements about the cinematic aspects of the films discussed in class. Furthermore, it makes interpretative statements transparent to other students and intersubjectively comprehensible.
Apart from learning the terminology for filmic devices mentioned above, students will need to familiarize themselves with methods of sequence analysis and
ways to take notes when watching and analyzing a film. As Corrigan writes, “despite the difficulty in taking your eyes off the screen momentarily, it is important
to take notes of some sort during a first and only viewing” (26). For a start, he
suggests, “to limit yourself to noting, with as much detail as possible, what you
consider the three or four most important scenes, shots, or sequences in a film”
(26). In her article “Teaching Films,” Carola Surkamp offers another approach to
taking viewing notes by providing a table that follows the distinction between
literary (setting, characters, events, themes, point of view), dramatic (location/props, actors, costumes, make-up), and cinematic (camera, color/lighting,
montage/editing, sound/music) aspects (9).13 This method is very practical for
group work in class: As individual groups focus on one of the aspects during the
film viewing and then exchange their observations, both the processing of audiovisual information and note taking can be considerably relieved. Most complex are
the examples of sequence analyses from Helmut Korte’s Einführung in die systema-
12
13
Other excellent introductions include Monaco, Hickethier, Korte, and Jahn.
See also Nünning and Surkamp (245-75).
29
tische Filmanalyse in which he uses elaborate graphs to analyze sound, camera
movements, cuts, and transitions.14
Students should be introduced to these different approaches, yet, for the purpose of teaching a class on American science fiction film in an American Studies
context, a middle ground that combines these (and other) ideas might be most
appropriate. More precisely, we suggest the following set of guiding questions that
the students should keep in mind when watching the films on the syllabus and
preparing the analysis of specific sequences:
• Narrative: What happens in the sequence on the level of plot? What is the
function of the sequence within the larger plot? How is the story being told
(e.g. linear, flashbacks, flash-forwards)? How do the various channels of information used in film (visual image, print, speech, sound) interact to produce meaning? Can you recognize a source of narration (e.g. voice-over, on
or off-screen commentary)? What is the narrator’s perspective? Is he reliable?
• Composition: How would you describe the setting (on location or in the studio, historical/contemporary/futuristic)? Do certain props take a symbolic
function? How do sets and props comment on the narrative? Is the space
cluttered or empty? Is it a landscape or an interior? Does the space express
a certain atmosphere or comment on a character’s state of mind? Which
colors are used (black and white/color/sepia, warm/cold/strong/washedout colors)? Can you discern any symbolic or subjective uses of colors?
How would you describe the lighting (high-key or low-key)? What is illuminated and what is in the shadow? Are there any special lighting effects (e.g.
shadows, spotlights)? How does the lighting enhance the expressive potential of the film? How do the actors interact verbally and/or non-verbally?
Are there special groupings of characters? What do appearance, gestures,
facial expressions signify? Are costume and make-up realistic/contemporary/futuristic? What do costumes signify with regard to social and cultural coding (class, gender, status, age)?
• Camera/Image: What are the field sizes used in the sequence (extreme long
shot/long shot/medium shot/close-up/extreme close-up etc.)? Is it a
deep/soft/sharp focus? Who or what is in and out of focus? How would
you describe the camera angle (high/low/straight-on/eye-level)? Does the
camera pan/tilt/zoom? Is it a tracking shot/crane shot/hand-held shot?
Does the camera always follow the action? What are the types of shots used
in the sequence (establishing shot/point-of-view shot/shot-reverse shot)?
• Montage/Editing: What comes before and what comes after the sequence?
Are there any transitions (fade/dissolve/wipe/iris)? Are there any match
14
See Chapter 3 “Systematische Filmanalyse” (24-55), in which Korte provides a detailed introduction to film analysis. Sub-chapter 3.3 (39-53) is particularly helpful because it presents different ways and tools to visualize cinematic structures.
30
cuts or jump cuts? Are the transitions gradual or abrupt? How do the transitions enhance the expressive potential of the film? Can you determine the
purpose of editing (cutting for continuity, i.e. invisible cutting/thematic or
dialectical montage/cross-cutting)? How long are the individual shots? Is
the sequence fast-paced/slow-paced? Are there major changes in rhythm
due to the narrative?
• Sound: What kind of music can you hear? Does it come from an on- or offscreen source (intra-diegetic/extra-diegetic)? Is it part of the story? Does it
comment on the action? Is it linked to a character? With what purpose is
music employed in the film? How does it direct our attention within the
image? How does it shape our interpretations of the image? How would
you describe the dialog (artificial/futuristic/foreign language, slang/dialect)? Do different characters use different kinds of language? Are there silences? Are the sound effects used in the sequence artificial or natural? Do
they have an on- or off-screen source? Does the sound belong to the action? Is there subjective sound? If there is a voice-over: Who is speaking? Is
the voice-over narrator part of the action or outside of it?15
The set of guiding questions could be provided as a worksheet, and the students
could form five expert groups, each group dealing with one cluster of guiding
questions. While the expert groups remain the same throughout the course – again
to enhance the bond among the participants and to create a productive work atmosphere – the respective guiding questions might rotate with each film. The
focus on one specific filmic category (narrative, composition, camera/image,
montage/editing, or sound) would not only ensure active viewing on the part of
the students but would also constitute an important practice of film analysis in the
while-viewing phase. This approach to science fiction films could be first put to use in
an exemplary analysis of the opening sequence of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body
Snatchers (1956). Ideally, the students’ observations should be discussed and commented on in class. However, if there is not enough time, it is also possible to do
so on an Internet platform or blog, where students can post their notes and interact with each other.16
A forum for discussion on an Internet platform/blog and/or a designated
time slot in class should also be reserved for pre- and post-viewing activities. Having
read a designated selection of secondary literature on the historical background of
the time in which the film was produced or on the film itself, students could for15
16
The set of guiding questions is based on Timothy J. Corrigan, Helmut Korte, and Carola Surkamp (“Teaching Films”). It is also indebted to Eric Rentschler and Anton Kaes and takes up
ideas from Dick and Monaco.
In the two courses “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American Science Fiction Films from
the 1950s to the Present” taught at the University of Göttingen and the University of Siegen,
the Internet-based learning sites Stud.IP (Göttingen) and Moodle (Siegen) were used as platforms for discussion throughout the term.
31
mulate notes about their expectations before watching the film. It should be
stressed that the students attempt to make statements from film analytical and
cultural studies perspectives. This pre-viewing activity is important and usually
very productive because, as Corrigan states, preliminary notes help students to
make economical use of their time and to recognize key sequences, shots, or narrative facts, which subsequently enables them to come up with a thesis (29-30).
Secondary literature on the cultural, historical, and political background helps
students to situate the films in a larger U.S. American context. Formulating a thesis and presenting a paper in class and/or at an undergraduate conference will
constitute the most challenging post-viewing activity for students in their first and
second years. Teachers should therefore provide assistance and feedback during
the process of finding an adequate topic and developing a tentative thesis.
In order to ensure active course participation during the presentations, students could focus on the following questions: What do you think about the presentation? Are there points with which you agree or disagree? Could you find additional pieces of evidence to support the thesis or would you rather take a different
approach to the aspects pointed out? Answering these questions not only fosters
critical engagement with the topics and theses presented in class. It also serves as a
preparation for the discussion sections at the conference. Formulating critical
comments and questions constitutes an important aspect of academic performance and has to be practiced accordingly. The safe environment of the classroom
is an ideal place for “trial and error” experimentations before the undergraduate
conference.
For all those students who feel that there is never enough time for discussion
in class or that important issues have not been raised, the teacher can provide a
space to post their ideas and final thoughts on the Internet platform or blog. Students should also be encouraged to formulate concluding remarks as a post-viewing
activity and to reconsider the preliminary notes they have formulated before watching the film and if those issues were addressed in class.
Considering the parallel undergraduate courses on American science fiction in
Göttingen and Siegen as a case study for the teaching approach presented here, it
might be interesting to add that the format, organization, and content as well as
the didactic approaches and methodology have received mostly positive feedback
from the students both in final class discussions and on anonymous evaluation
forms. The main points of critique were that the course was extremely timeconsuming – with (extra) screening sessions and a three-day conference – and that
scheduling the undergraduate conference at the end of the term interfered with
exam preparations. Yet, positive opinions prevailed: Most students enjoyed the
productive atmosphere in class, liked the discussions, and thought that the conference with our external expert Prof. Eric S. Rabkin and the fellow students from
Göttingen and Siegen were special and enriching experiences they would not want
to miss. What is more important from the teachers’ perspective is the students’
32
efforts and achievements, or, in other words, the fact that all students excelled in
their academic performance in class, at the conference and in their term papers.
IV
The present volume documents the hard work, dedication, and commitment of
thirteen students from Göttingen and Siegen who have participated in the course
“Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American Science Fiction Film from the
1950s to the Present” and the concluding undergraduate conference in the summer term of 2009. They have repeatedly revised and improved their contributions:
first, after presenting their initial ideas in class; then, after the undergraduate conference; and, finally, after handing in their term papers. The results of this continuous revision are collected in this volume. The progress of the students during
the entire process – from conceiving their ideas for the paper to the final publication – has been really astounding. This is also true for those students whose papers could not be included in this book. Unfortunately, the editors had to select
the best among many excellent papers. The final result are twelve student essays –
one is co-authored by two students from Siegen – divided into four sections that
group the essays according to shared research interest and do not reflect the
chronological approach taken in the course. This arrangement brings to the fore
lasting, changing, and recurring themes as well as stylistic and filmic devices that
are part of both American culture and the science fiction genre.
Part I is entitled “The Look and Sound of Science Fiction Film.” All three
contributions in this section focus on the filmic use of visual effects, special effects, and sound that evokes what could be called a particular science fiction atmosphere. First, Jörn Piontek’s essay analyzes different examples of visual subversion in Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green (1973). In Vivian Sobchack’s words – on
whose definition Piontek’s analysis is based – visual subversion is a cinematic
technique that is often used in science fiction films and that can be understood as
“the alienation of the familiar” (Screening Space 107). Piontek shows how disturbingly familiar images are used to create the effect of a threateningly possible
dystopian future. Dennis Edelmann then explores the special effects in the Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix (1999). He argues that critics have mostly focused
on the revolutionary content and unique visuals of the film but have neglected the
groundbreaking special effects and their impact on the film industry. Edelmann’s
discussion of the special effects in The Matrix pays particular attention to how
reality is deconstructed and how bullet time is employed in the film. In the next
essay, Fabian Grumbrecht turns to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
He provides a close reading of the sequence in which astronaut Dave Bowman
turns off the board computer HAL 9000. According to Grumbrecht, this specific
sequence stands in stark contrast to other cinematic showdowns in which the
33
antagonist is destroyed – not only on the level of plot but also on the visual and
aural levels.
Part II, entitled “Social and Political Commentaries,” contains four essays that
deal with the critical potential of science fiction films. They investigate to what
extent science fiction films can participate in the cultural, political, and religious
discourses of their respective decades. First, Niklas Franzen takes a close look at
“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” – the Stargate sequence in 2001 – and examines
its popularity with young adults of the 1960s U.S. counterculture. While contemporary critics were convinced that young viewers enjoyed the innovative, highly
psychedelic sequence in 2001 because of its hallucinogenic effects (commonly
enhanced by the use of drugs), Franzen reads the success of the sequence also as
an expression of opposition by relating the film’s release to the Vietnam War, the
Civil Rights Movement, and student protests in the 1960s. In the following essay,
Manfred Alexander Müller analyzes manhood and masculinity in Don Siegel’s
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). He interprets key scenes of the movie as highly
charged reflections on the post-war decline of small-town patriarchy and the related threat to male social and political dominance in the United States. Philipp
Stückrath’s reading of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002) then links the
theme of personal liberty vs. state control prevalent in the post-9/11 film to the
current political situation in the United States. Even though the film is based on a
science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick that was first published in 1956,
Stückrath reveals many similarities between the celebrated yet dysfunctional PreCrime system in the film and the institutions and laws of state control in the present-day United States that were established after the terrorist attacks in 2001
(such as the Department of Homeland Security and the USA PATRIOT Act).
Part II closes with Moritz Emmelmann’s analysis of religion in Soylent Green. Emmelmann argues that in the context of the extreme social, economic, and moral
crisis depicted in Soylent Green the Christian Church is presented as a charitable
institution and stronghold of spiritual leadership and moral integrity.
Part III of this collection is entitled “Themes and Motifs of Science Fiction
Films.” The section starts with an essay by Dennis Kogel and Iris Schäfer. They
look at a key motif of science fiction film and literature: the doppelgänger. Kogel
and Schäfer provide a survey of five distinct motifs used in science fiction film
and TV series (clones, artificial intelligence, time travel, parallel universes, virtual
identities) in order to demonstrate how the idea of the self is challenged in contemporary science fiction productions, and how it relates to modern capitalism in
an information society. In the second essay of this section, Stefanie Schwarz analyzes the importance of vision and the eye motif – another recurring motif in science fiction films – in Minority Report. Schwarz reads images of eyes that serve to
identify citizens in the dystopian Pre-Crime society of the film as well as visions of
future crimes arranged and interpreted by the Pre-Cops in the context of power
relations, determination, and reliability. Solveig Burfeind’s reading of Invasion of the
Body Snatchers finally focuses on elements of film noir in the 1950s film and exam-
34
ines whether Becky Driscoll can be classified as a femme fatale. Burfeind shows that
Becky shares many characteristics with a femme fatale: Not only does Becky look
like a femme fatale (especially when compared to other female characters in Invasion),
as a divorced woman she is also sexually experienced and effectively seduces Miles
Bennell, whom she later tries to turn over to the alien pod people.
The final section of this volume, Part IV, is entitled “(De)Constructing Bodies
and Identities” and consists of two essays that deal with the body and its various
functions and realizations in science fiction film. First, Benjamin Ryan Ulonska
reads Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its remakes as a narrative that combines elements of science fiction and horror in order to comment on changing perceptions
of the body in the respective decades of the film’s remakes. Ulonska argues that
the specific horror elements and outer appearance of the aliens – their bodies – in
these invasion films reflect the dominant political, cultural, and social anxieties of
the decades in which the individual versions were produced. In the last student
essay, Gina Ziebell analyzes the realization of the cinematic body in times of information technology in The Matrix. Ziebell examines the human body and identity in terms of the obsolescence of the body and the construction of the virtual
subject by relating it to the question of agency based on space, mobility, and bodily control inside and outside the Matrix.
The volume closes with an essay by Eric S. Rabkin in which he describes his
personal experiences and lifelong fascination with science fiction films. Rabkin’s
autobiographical essay is entitled “The Creature from Brooklyn: My Life and Science Fiction Film” and tells the story of a young boy from Brooklyn who discovers and falls in love with science fiction and eventually becomes an acclaimed
teacher and internationally recognized critic of the field. It is his courtesy of contributing this original essay to the present volume as well as his invaluable presence at the conference, his instructional comments during the publication process,
and his enthusiastic dedication to the entire project for which the editors are most
grateful.
35
Works Cited
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Bach, Gerhard, and Jürgen Donnerstag, eds. Teaching American Studies in the Twenty-First
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Bachmann-Medick, Doris. Cultural Turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften.
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Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. 1994. Ann
Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2007. Print.
Booker, Marvin Keith. Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American Culture.
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Buchenau, Barbara, and Carola Hecke. “Die Literatur zur eigenen Sache machen:
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Cornea, Christine. Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007. Print.
Corrigan, Timothy J. A Short Guide to Writing about Film. 6th ed. New York: PearsonLongman, 2007. Print.
Dick, Bernard F. Anatomy of Film. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1978. Print.
Delanoy, Werner, and Laurenz Volkmann, eds. Cultural Studies in the EFL Classroom.
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Donnerstag, Jürgen and Laurenz Volkmann. “Introduction: Media and American
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Freese, Peter. “American Studies and EFL-Teaching in Germany: A Troubled Relationship.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 50.1/2 (2005): 183-229. Print.
Gunn, James. Alternate Worlds: The Illustrates History of Science Fiction. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975. Print.
Hendershot, Cyndy. Paranoia, the Bomb, and 1950s Science Fiction Films. Bowling Green,
OH: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1999. Print.
Hickethier, Knut. Film- und Fernsehanalyse. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996. Print.
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Jahn, Manfred. “A Guide to Narratological Film Analysis.” Poems, Plays, and Prose: A
Guide to the Theory of Literary Genres. English Department, U of Cologne, 2003.
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James, Edward. Science Fiction in the 20th Century. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Print.
Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science
Fictions. New York: Verso, 2005.
--- and Farah Mendlesohn. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.
Kelleter, Frank and Daniel Stein, eds. American Studies as Media Studies. Heidelberg:
Winter, 2008. Print.
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Kelleter and Daniel Stein. Heidelberg: Winter, 2008. ix-xvi. Print.
Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and
the Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.
Korte, Helmut. Einführung in die Systematische Filmanalyse. 2nd. ed. Berlin: Erich Schmitt
Verl., 2001. Print.
Monaco, James. How to Read a Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. Print.
Maxwell, Richard. “The Historiography of Fiction in the Romantic Period.” The Cambridge Companion to Fiction in the Romantic Period. Eds. Richard Maxwell and Katie
Trumpener. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2008. 7-21. Print.
Nünning, Ansgar. “Towards a Cultural and Historical Narratology: A Survey of Diachronic Approaches, Concepts, and Research Projects.” Anglistentag 1999 Mainz:
Proceedings. Ed. Berhard Reitz and Sigrid Rieuwerts. Trier: WVT, 2000. 345-73.
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---, and Carola Surkamp. Englische Literatur unterrichten: Grundlagen und Methoden. SeelzeVelber: Klett/Kallmeyer, 2006. Print.
Parrinder, Patrick, ed. Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition and the Politics of
Science Fiction and Utopia. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000. Print.
---. Science Fiction: A Critical Guide. London/New York: Longman, 1979. Print.
Rabkin, Eric S. “American Science Fiction Film: No Final Frontiers.” Of Body
Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American Science Fiction Films from the 1950s to the Present.
Undergraduate Student Conference. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. 3
July 2009. Keynote speech.
---. “Science Fiction.” International Encyclopedia of Communications.” Eds. Eric
Barnouw et al. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. 19-23. Print.
--- and Robert Scholes. Science Fiction: History, Science, Vision. New York: Oxford UP,
1977. Print.
Rentschler, Eric and Anton Kaes. Reading a Film Sequence. U of Victoria, n.d. Web. 19
Apr. 2009. <http://web.uvic.ca/geru/439/seq.html>.
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Roberts, Adam. Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
---. The History of Science Fiction. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2006. Print.
Sanders, Steven M., ed. The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film. Lexington, KY: U of Kentucky P, 2008. Print.
Seed, David, ed. A Companion to Science Fiction. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Print.
---. American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
UP, 1999. Print.
Seidl, Monika. “Visual Culture: Bilder lesen lernen, Medienkompetenz erwerben.” Der
fremdsprachliche Unterricht Englisch 87 (2007): 2-7. Print.
Sobchack, Vivian. “American Science Fiction Film: An Overview.” A Companion to
Science Fiction. Ed. David Seed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 261-74. Print.
---. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New Brunswick, NJ/London: Rutgers UP, 1999. Print.
Surkamp, Carola. “A Cultural Approach to Films in the Foreign Language Classroom:
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---. Positions and Prepositions in Science Fiction. Basingstoke: Macmillan P, 1988. Print.
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Telotte, Jay P. Science Fiction Film. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.
Voigts-Virchow, Eckart. Introduction to Media Studies. Stuttgart: Klett, 2005. Print.
Part I
The Look and Sound of Science Fiction Film
Jörn Piontek
“There was a world once, you punk”:
Visual Subversion in Fleischer’s Soylent Green
Introduction
[Thorn:] There was a world once. You punk.
[Sol:] Yes. So you keep telling me.
– Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973)
In many ways, Soylent Green is a film about humanity in the future looking back at,
and longing for, a world that is long gone – the world of the film’s audience in
1973. For the majority of people living in the dystopia of Soylent Green, life has
been reduced to a struggle for survival due to overpopulation, pollution and diminishing resources. Over 40 million people live in New York City and barely
survive on the scarce food and water rations provided by the Soylent Corporation.
After one of New York’s few wealthy men is murdered in his apartment, police
detective Robert Thorn is assigned to the case and slowly but steadily uncovers
the truth behind the Soylent Corporation: the new miracle food called Soylent
Green is made from the bodies of people who died in voluntary euthanasia clinics.
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Jörn Piontek
Before further discussing this film, I would like to explain why I chose Soylent
Green as the topic of this article and not one of the other films (Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Minority Report) discussed in the course.
Initially, the most important factor was the fact that I had not seen Soylent
Green before and therefore had no preconceived notions about the film which
might have distracted me while trying to analyze it from a scholarly perspective.
Although this was also the case with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I had always been
interested in watching Soylent Green, mostly because of various references to it in
TV shows, most of which parody the film’s final revelation that “Soylent Green is
people!” (Soylent Green), such as this example from Futurama:
Fry: My God. What if the secret ingredient … is people?
Leela: No. There’s already a soda like that: Soylent Cola.
Fry: Oh, how is it?
Leela: It varies from person to person.
(Morton)
Given the status of Soylent Green as a cult classic that was and is spoofed and parodied in popular culture, I was very much interested in seeing and analyzing it.
In contrast to other films in the syllabus of the course, hardly any research has
been conducted on Soylent Green. Whereas a search for articles on Blade Runner in
the MLA International Bibliography returns over 100 results written in English, a
search for Soylent Green returns only one, an article that is “concerned with the
scientific and technological regimes of efficiency within [the] broader discourse of
a limited earth” (Höhler). A different article by Ronnie Lipschutz focuses on the
insight that Soylent Green offers “into twenty-first-century capitalism based as it is
on the same principles, to wit, commodification of the body” (Lipschutz 573).
Of the little academic writing on Soylent Green, the majority of publications
deals with the film’s political, ecological or social implications rather than its
visuals. One notable exception is Vivian Sobchack. In her book Screening Space: The
American Science Fiction Film, however, Soylent Green is only one of many films analyzed in a broader context. I can only speculate why there is so little research on
Soylent Green and especially its visuals, but I think there are multiple reasons for
this neglect in the past.
First of all, Soylent Green is not a particularly critically acclaimed film. Even
though it has the status of a cult classic, this is mostly due to the film’s 1970s production values that seem unintentionally funny to many modern viewers as well as
Charlton Heston’s iconic performance, especially in the film’s ending scene.1
Much of the story’s premise is lost due to the focus that lies on the classic detective plot. Instead of directly dealing with the problems that arise in Soylent Green,
1
See, for example, the parody of the ending sequence in an episode of Saturday Night Live on
March 13, 1993 (Season 18, Episode 15).
Visual Subversion in Soylent Green
43
the plot revolves mostly around Thorn slowly discovering the secret of Soylent
Green and his relationship with Shirl.
Furthermore, Soylent Green lacks the spectacular special effects of films like
2001: A Space Odyssey or the somber, intense atmosphere of Blade Runner. Instead,
it meanders between luxurious apartments in the world of the rich, chases through
deserted streets and some scenes that actually depict the consequences of overpopulation that were much more present in Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make
Room!, the novel the film is based on. When special effects are used, they have not
aged well. The scoops in the riot scenes might have looked impressive in 1973 but
they do not work in the twenty-first century. In contrast to the strange visuals and
distorted images of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soylent Green literally relies on brute
force. Modern viewers who have seen the spectacular visuals of films such as The
Matrix or Minority Report will not be awestruck by what the special effects in Soylent
Green have to offer.
Additionally, the alarmist predictions by Paul Ehrlich that were the trigger for
the fear of overpopulation that spawned Make Room! Make Room! and Soylent Green
never became true, at least not in the Western world.2 It is therefore easy to dismiss many of the implications present in the film. In other words, I would argue
that Soylent Green seems to be neglected by academics mostly because it does little
to elaborate on the interesting background of its story but rather treats it as merely
the setting of an ultimately very conventional and bland detective plot. Moreover,
it suffers because special effects failed to recreate the terror of riots in a vastly
overpopulated city that is so compelling in the novel and even on the film poster.
Together, the film’s shortcomings result in a lack of timelessness compared to
films that enjoy a higher degree of interest in scholarly writing, such as Star Wars.
Although the film does not have a high standing among critics, in my opinion,
Soylent Green is – despite its flaws – still a film worth seeing today. One of the reasons for that is its sometimes subtle use of visual subversion, which is the topic I
will analyze in the following. Instead of dehumanizing people directly, Soylent Green
visually subverts the staples of life in order to make the viewers aware of how the
things they take for granted may easily be lost in the future.
Visual Subversion
Before talking about Soylent Green, I will explain visual subversion as used by
Vivian Sobchack and give a few examples of how this technique is used in other
films. In short, visual subversion is “the alienation of the familiar” (Sobchack
2
Having published several articles and books on the subject of overpopulation and its effects,
Paul Ehrlich was a central figure in the discourse that led to the publication of Make Room! Make
Room! and the making of Soylent Green. His most famous work is The Population Bomb and Ehrlich,
professor of Population Studies at Stanford University, also wrote the introduction to the paperback edition of Make Room! Make Room!.
44
Jörn Piontek
107). More precisely, an entity or abstract concept that is familiar to the viewer is
visually related to something alien and strange. Consequently, the viewer is caught
somewhere between familiar territory and the disconcerting unknown. In contrast
to the solely new and alien, the “opposing impulses” (108) created by the connection of familiarity and strangeness create a disturbing and uncomfortable atmosphere rather than a simply frightening one.
One example of the effects of visual subversion can actually be found in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), a film that was also part of the syllabus. In Body
Snatchers, people created by seed pods take over a small town. The pod people look
exactly like the humans they replace and in fact only their close relatives are able
to notice that there is something wrong with them. Although they are sure that
something is wrong, they cannot comprehend it and question their own judgment.
This can be seen in a scene where a woman doubts her impression that her Uncle
is not who he used to be. To quote her friend, the film’s protagonist: “No one
could possibly impersonate your Uncle Ira … the trouble is inside you” (Body
Snatchers). Similarly, the viewer can often only guess who has already been taken
over and thus watches the character’s every gesture, creating an uncanny aura of
paranoia.
The pod people in Body Snatchers are not run-of-the-mill aliens but visual
equivalents of humans that lack one defining feature of their counterparts: emotion. Thus, they are dehumanized. The effect created is not so much the fear of the
unknown but rather the fear of the familiar turning into the unknown, causing the
need to question everything that is familiar.
Visual subversion is a common technique in Science Fiction film and not limited to the dehumanization found in Body Snatchers. In the opening sequence of
Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later …, the familiar concept of the contemporary city is
visually subverted. In this sequence, the protagonist awakens in a hospital and
soon finds out that no one else is in the building. He then stumbles to the outside
and wanders through the city of London without seeing another human being.
The city is completely devoid of any human life except for himself. This stands in
stark contrast to what a viewer would expect of a densely populated urban area
like London. Through the use of extreme long shots and a very slow pace as well
as an eerie silence instead of the noise of modern cities, this sequence makes for a
very uncomfortable beginning of the film. With regard to the two film examples,
then, visual subversion is best described as “[t]he way in which the secure and
familiar are twisted into something subtly dangerous and slyly perverted” (Sobchack 124).
In the remainder of this article I will analyze how Soylent Green visually subverts
the familiar and point out what it does differently in contrast to the previously
mentioned examples.
45
In my thesis I claim that Soylent Green does not feature the same kind of visual
subversion that is found in Invasion of the Body Snatchers because it does not dehumanize people but rather their living conditions. While the latter is rather obvious,
it is also directly stated in the film that it is not the people that have changed:
[Thorn:] When you were young. People were better. (sic)
[Sol:] Oh. Nuts. People were always rotten. But the world was beautiful.
(Soylent Green)
As Sol states, the world used to be different, but people have not really changed as
they have always had the same flaws. The same idea is also stressed on the film
poster which reads, “It’s the year 2022 … People are still the same.”
According to my thesis, Soylent Green instead visually subverts the staples of
life, the things most critical for human survival. Among them are access to personal space, privacy, water and food. For “[a] starving person cares very little
about writing majestic poetry, buying an impressive-looking car, finding a sweetheart, or avoiding injury – or anything other than the overriding goal of obtaining
food” (Ewen). Whilst in the film other needs such as the need for a family are
subverted, I will focus on the aforementioned ones as they are either visually more
striking or more central to the film. Moreover, the notion of family, for example,
is subverted in the film as it is not depicted at all, except for a short scene in which
Thorn finds a baby next to the corpse of its mother.
Subversion of Space and Privacy
Even though the lack of space and consequently the lack of privacy are not depicted as strongly as they are in Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, there
still is a large number of scenes that try to illustrate the effect of extreme overpopulation in an urban area. Both small cramped spaces such as hallways and
open spaces such as the streets filled with people (during the riot scene, for example) are supposed to convey the idea of a completely overpopulated New York
City.
Although no numbers are given in the film, it is safe to assume that an overwhelming percentage of the population is homeless. These people spend the day
outside in the heat and dirt, and during the night they have to find temporary
homes and cram themselves into hallways or onto stairs because the curfew forbids them to stay outside. Without a home and spending their nights together with
dozens of strangers cramped into the tiniest spaces, they have no refuge to withdraw to, no place to store their belongings and no walls or doors to secure their
physical well-being while they sleep.
These living conditions for the majority of the population are contrasted by
the images shown to Sol when he decides to visit one of the euthanasia-facilities.
46
Jörn Piontek
The previously ever-present grainy brownish filter used during the outside scenes
gives way to the vivid and natural colors that appear in the vast landscapes shown
on the huge screen during Sol’s death. This effect is enhanced by the joyous music
as well as the zoom of the camera in one particular moment where the camera
starts out with a long shot of a herd of sheep and then zooms out until the sheep
can hardly be seen.
In the cramped and overpopulated world of Soylent Green, reminders of the
past with its vast landscapes and beautiful scenery are used to entice the elderly to
die. The waiting lines in the euthanasia-facility show that they are willing to do so
as the real world hardly offers the bare minimum needed for survival.
Subversion of Water
Both the original audience and the contemporary viewer take easy access to clean
water for granted. Every home has running tap water that you can use to wash
yourself or to drink. To us, these are ordinary things. In Soylent Green, they are only
available to the wealthy people and the ordinary citizens have to make do with
rationed water handed out in plastic containers. Even for a policeman like Thorn,
water is too rare to use for shaving or even taking a shower. Consequently, the
running tap water in Mr. Simonson’s apartment amazes him.
Usually, in a film a shot of a character washing his hands would be an afterthought, last a few seconds at best, and would actually not be about the character
washing his hands but something else that is going on. In Soylent Green, a single
shot of running tap water lasts for about 40 seconds, showing how extraordinary
such a simple thing is to Thorn. It is not about Thorn thinking about the murder
case or even thinking of anything, it is about his pure enjoyment of the water. By
putting such emphasis on banalities, it is – in Sobchack’s words – “impossible for
us to look at the bathroom in the film as a familiar place” (132).
At a later point in the film, it is not the promise of intimacy with Shirl that
convinces Thorn to stay in her apartment. It is only when she mentions that they
can take a hot shower that he agrees to stay and this is further strengthened by the
focus of the camera: Initially, the shot only shows the shower head and the water
pouring down and then it tilts down very slowly to show the characters in the
shower. Once more water is not just an afterthought but essential to the characters’ state of mind.
Subversion of Food
The same can be said about the treatment of the concept of food in Soylent Green.
As the eponymous miracle food Soylent Green suggests, food is of paramount
importance to the story. In the world of Soylent Green, there are two kinds of food.
There are Soylent products, described as “[t]asteless, odorless crud” (Soylent Green)
by Thorn and then there is the kind of food that the viewer is familiar with: vege-
47
tables, fruit, meat, bread. In Soylent Green, the latter kind of food is – just like
space, privacy and water – available only to the rich people. Even Thorn’s superior at the police office is only seen eating Soylent products. These products are
the only food available to the common people and at best manage to keep them
alive. Visually, the “miracle food” (Soylent Green) Soylent Green resembles wafers
of metal or plastic and seems to be rather brown than green. Its appearance is
wholly inorganic. Hardly anyone would be able to identify it as food without the
context of the film and yet a riot starts when the stores run out of it on Soylent
Green Tuesday, the only day of the week on which it is actually sold.
The proper food, on the other hand, is sold at black market grocery stores
protected by armed men. For a small amount of groceries Shirl has to pay $279, a
price that – startling as it is to a contemporary viewer – becomes even more estranging when it is adjusted for inflation: $279 in 1973 equal about $1,353 in 2008.
In a city where hardly anyone has a job, a single proper meal costs more than
$1,000, assuming that the value of the dollar in the film was supposed to equal the
actual value in 1973 (“Consumer Price Index”). The emotional reaction such a
meal causes is thus not surprising in this context but astounding nonetheless. In
one shot, Sol is at first awestruck by the sight of a piece of beef and only moments
later he realizes what the world around him has become and how it has changed
during his lifetime. The sight of such a common thing to the viewer as a piece of
beef causes him to cry and leaves him devastated, forcing the viewer to reflect on
his own reaction to such banalities and compare them to the effect they have on
the characters.
In what is probably the most extreme case of visual subversion in the film, Sol
and Thorn celebrate their dinner, which also marks the first time that Sol eats
anything other than Soylent products. In this sequence of about two minutes, the
characters do not talk at all except for the Yiddish toast L’Chayim, meaning literally
to life. Combined with the celebratory music it seems like they try not to talk because it would ruin the moment. Although they do not talk, their reactions to the
food and the whole ritual of cooking and eating together become obvious in their
gestures and facial expressions. And to someone like Sol, who grew up religious
and remembers the old world, eating such a meal becomes a spiritual experience.
Before, eating food was merely something that was necessary to survive, a
means to an end, but the completely different experience of actually cooking food,
putting it on a plate and paying attention to all the other little details of eating a
dinner that are so much taken for granted by the viewers, are extremely special to
the characters. Consequently, the camera focuses on all these small details such as
using a spoon to put the meat on the plate or the stalk that is left over after Thorn
eats the apple. The fact that Thorn waits for Sol to eat the apple and imitates the
way Sol rubs it on his shirt also shows that Thorn does not know how to eat an
apple, which both amuses and irritates the viewer. Another small detail of which
there are many in this sequence is the fact that Sol has to use a plastic fork, pre-
48
Jörn Piontek
sumably because they possess only one proper silverware fork as they are completely useless when all you have to eat are Soylent crackers or wafers.
Just like the bathroom in the shot mentioned before, this dinner may at a first
glance be similar to what a viewer would expect a regular dinner to be like in a
film, but there are so many things that defamiliarize the whole event, only some of
which have been mentioned here. This is not only a dinner, it is much rather a
celebration of things trite to the viewer and also serves as escapism from the bleak
reality of Soylent Green. Not coincidentally does the sequence end with a fade to the
next shot, a transition that is unique in the film that otherwise only has clear cuts
thus giving the sequence an almost dreamlike quality.
Conclusion
Despite its numerous flaws, Soylent Green also has some strong points, some of
which I have discussed in this chapter. While there may be more impressive, intelligent or engaging science fiction films, Soylent Green’s attention to small details in
many scenes is worthy of praise, and it is a testament to good film making when
such subtle things as a plastic fork or the stalk of an apple contribute more to the
defamiliarization of the viewer than big, expensive special effects.
Soylent Green differs from many science fiction films in that it does not feature
any alien species invading the world or huge technological breakthroughs. On the
contrary, there seems to be no scientific progress at all. The very few rich people
do live in quite luxurious and extravagant apartments, but they look like apartments from the 1970s and not from the year 2022. Soylent Green is science fiction
in which science has not found the answer to the world’s problem. By putting
emphasis on the notion that people have not changed, it urges viewers to reflect
on their own attitude and actions and this is successful to a large extend because
of the subversion I have analyzed in this article. For these are the things that establish the connection between the familiar actual world the viewer lives in and
the dystopian future of Soylent Green.
Calling it “an interesting bad film” (Johnson 62), William Johnson wrote in his
review: “[t]he best scenes in Soylent Green are effective because simple: Thorn reveling in water from a faucet or in a dinner of genuine meat and vegetables – luxuries almost beyond imagining in his world” (62). Through the creation of such a
similar yet alien world by means of visual subversion, Soylent Green manages to
make us aware of just how much we take for granted and it makes us realize that
resources which seem abundant nowadays may very well be depleted in the notso-distant future.
In the end, it is not only the film’s take on a society that is pushed towards –
and ultimately beyond – its limits, but also the techniques of visual subversion
employed that makes it a film worth seeing, even 36 years after its release.
49
Films Cited
28 Days Later … Dir. Danny Boyle. Perf. Cilian Murphy. 2002. DNA Films, 2003.
DVD.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Perf. Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.
1956. Walter Wanger Productions, 1998. DVD.
Soylent Green. Dir. Richard Fleischer. Perf. Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, and
Edward G. Robinson. 1973. MGM, 2003. DVD.
Works Cited
“Consumer Price Index 1913-2009.” U.S. Department of Labor, n.d. Web. 10 Sep.
2009. <ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt>.
Ehrlich, Paul R. The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine Books, 1968. Print.
Ewen, Robert B. An Introduction to Theories of Personality. 6th ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 2003. Print.
Harrison, Harry. Make Room! Make Room!. 1966. New York: Tom Doherty Associates,
2008. Print.
Höhler, Sabine. “‘Carrying Capacity’: The Moral Economy of the ‘Coming Spaceship
Earth.’” Atenea 26.1 (June 2006): 59-74. Print.
Johnson, William. Rev. of Soylent Green, by Richard Fleischer. Film Quarterly 26.4
(Summer 1973): 62-63. Print.
Lipschutz, Ronnie D. “‘Soylent Green … is … PEOPLE!’: Labour, Bodies and Capital in the Global Political Economy.” Milennium 34 (2005): 573-7. Print.
Morton, Lewis. “Futurama 2x04: Fry & The Slurm Factory.” tvtdb.com. The Television
Transcript Database, n.d. Web. 15 Aug. 2009. <http://www.tvtdb.com/ futurama/transcripts/2x04.php>.
Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. 2nd ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1997. 107-36. Print.
Dennis Edelmann
“Like Alice in Wonderland”:
Special Effects in The Matrix
A great deal has been written on The Matrix (and its sequels), both in popular literature, as well as in academic research, ranging from complete book volumes of
several hundred pages to essays of just a few pages. The majority of texts on The
Matrix lay their focus on the numerous allusions to (popular) culture like, for example, Alice in Wonderland, religion, and, above all, philosophical works like Jean
Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation. In this context, scholars often anatomize the
movie, and interpret every character’s name, their utterances and even the slightest
details in props in order to make them into symbols for their particular thesis. By
doing so, they often neglect the film’s very unique look and visual content, and no
credit is given to the groundbreaking special effects that were used and their impact on the movie industry.
Since the beginning of science fiction film, special effects have played an important role because special effects are a visual technique of showing the audience
something they have never seen before, or by making ordinary things appear in a
strange and unfamiliar way. As special effects rely heavily on technology and technological progress, the extent to which special effects have been used in science
fiction films has increased significantly over the past decades. Naturally, the quality of these special effects has constantly increased over the course of the history
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Dennis Edelmann
of science fiction film, just as (especially computer) technology is advancing on an
almost daily basis.
The undergraduate course “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American
Science Fiction Films from the 1950s to the Present” focused on different science
fiction movies from various decades. Each single film has been of significant influence on the science fiction genre, both concerning their plots and ideas, as well
as the usage of special effects. In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner the use of special effects was particularly revolutionary
for the (science fiction) film genre. But in none of the movies which the course
made a subject of discussion special effects and their twisting of reality played an
equally important role as in the Wachowski brother’s The Matrix.
This chapter thus focuses on exactly this aspect because the special effects in
The Matrix deconstruct reality on the visual level and have significantly influenced
the display of action in (science fiction) movies. “Reality” in this context is “the
state of things as they actually exist” outside the movie theater (“Reality”). In support of this thesis, I will first cover the deconstruction of reality by special effects
within the movie. Secondly, I will take a closer look at the so called bullet time
effect and its relation to pace. The third part of this article will then focus on the
influences of The Matrix on the science fiction film and the movie industry in general.
The Deconstruction of Reality by Special Effects
It can be said that as early as in the first scene of The Matrix, the viewer experiences a reality which is very much different from an everyday perception of reality.
Police cars with flashing sirens arrive in front of a hotel for a raid, which in itself is
not yet something special or unfamiliar. But right from the start, the atmosphere
of the film is very dark, with little to no lighting, and everything is kept in a
strange grayish-green tone. This sense of unfamiliarity peaks when the female
protagonist Trinity has her first appearance on screen. When approached by the
police officers, she jumps up and seems to freeze in her movement. Meanwhile,
the camera rotates around her horizontally. After the camera has completed a 180
degree spin, Trinity’s movements continue: she kicks one of the police officers
and sends him flying through the room against a wall. She effortlessly battles off
the rest of them and then miraculously flees over the rooftops, exercising sheer
impossible jumps, to finally disappear into a telephone. Clearly, the audience is
immediately thrown into the alternative world of the matrix, in which certain
physical rules do not seem to apply.
But in the following sequences, in which the movie’s male protagonist Neo is
introduced, the reality we are shown seems very much familiar to our own contemporary reality outside of the movie theater, except for an unfamiliar green filter
that has been laid over the camera. Also, little by little we again begin to doubt
53
what we see to be real, because scenes like the interrogation of Neo by Agent
Smith imply that reality here is different. As Neo, whom we have only known as
Thomas Anderson so far, is being questioned by Smith and two other agents, he
refuses to cooperate, resulting in his mouth nightmarishly growing shut, leaving
him unable to speak (or scream). In addition, Neo is literary being “bugged” as
Smith inserts an electronic device into his navel which then turns into a giant bug.
It is to a certain relief that what follows is a drastic and sudden cut to Neo
waking up. Has all we have seen so far then merely been a dream? The answer
seems to be yes, although the atmosphere created by little lighting, menacing
sound and the confusing plot continues to uphold a certain mysteriousness. However, when Neo rides in the car with Trinity and the others, the excerption of the
bug makes us realize that what has happened so far was in fact real. But how can
this be real? The world portrayed looks very much like reality, yet the gradually
dispersed special effects indicate that this place is of another origin. Just like Neo,
the audience hopes to find an answer in Morpheus. He seems to know the answer
as to what the matrix is, so maybe he can finally clarify what is happening here.
Unfortunately, the sequence in which Morpheus gives Neo the choice as to either
learning the truth about the matrix or waking up in his bed from a strange dream
offers quite the opposite. The strange green tone remains and the menacing lighting does not change either. In addition, a mirror Neo touches simply liquefies.
What is even more confusing for the audience, however, is the following
scene in which Neo is freed from the matrix, which turns out to be a computer
animated illusion created by machines in order to control humans while exploiting
them. Again, he wakes up, this time inside a tank filled with an unspecified pink
liquid. As we have learned by now, he finds himself in what is supposed to be the
“real world” of the movie. For no apparent reason though, his surrounding does
not look at all like reality as we would expect it. The camera shows us huge towers
with countless tanks just like the one Neo has just awoken in, and suddenly an
insect-like robot grabs him and unplugs various cables that are attached to his
body. Even for a science fiction movie, this scene is special, as this first scene of
the movie set in the supposedly “real” world is a scene in which the protagonist is
the only thing that is not a computer animation.
As we notice in the following scenes, also the strange green filter is gone, only
to have been replaced by a strange blue touch. Morpheus and his crew fly around
in an (obviously computer animated) hovercraft and the idea of the matrix as it is
described by Morpheus over the following sequences does not only evoke Neo to
vomit, but also shocks the audience. After all, they cannot be absolutely sure
about the fact that their reality is nothing but a “computer animated dream world”
just like the matrix.
That the matrix is not real could be accepted more or less, considering Morpheus’ repeated demonstrations of the fact that certain aspects such as strength,
speed and physical rules can easily be bent inside the matrix. But why is it, then,
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Dennis Edelmann
that the matrix seems a lot more familiar to our understanding of reality than the
world portrayed as the “real” world? In the “real” world of the movie, there are
also numerous aspects which make it very unappealing as an actual concept of
reality. The atmosphere stays frightfully dark, and just as inside the matrix there is
little to no lighting, a blue filter is used and most of the surroundings have obviously been created digitally. Of course, most of all the idea of human beings being
no longer born, but “grown” as batteries for the machines (which is repeatedly
shown in an utterly realistic array of special effects), is what renders this “real”
world so unappealing.
How come, then, that all the technical instruments, weapons, the ship, clothing and other ordinary items still look somehow familiar, just the way you would
find them in the real world outside the movie theater? Is this reality after all? What
is reality, and what is just a dream?
Up to this point in the movie, the viewer cannot find a clear answer to these
questions. Both in the matrix and in the “real” world there are things that make
them seem unreal, be it people jumping from one skyscraper to another, or flying
hovercrafts. Yet the matrix features everything we know from our own society
and civilization. While the “real” world is portrayed as an utterly sad and dark
place, it still features all the things that we would expect to find when believing
what Morpheus told us about the war between men and the machines as a consequence of which the few remaining free humans have to live in the sewers of the
machine world. The question therefore is whether there are facts/incidents that
indicate that one of the two worlds is “more real” than the other?
The lobby scene provides us with a first answer. Here it becomes quite clear
that the reality of the matrix is definitely not real. In this scene, the idea that speed
and rules of gravity do not apply inside the matrix (as was suggested by Morpheus
when explaining the matrix to Neo) is very obvious. Neo and Trinity effortlessly
battle numerous police officers by shooting hundreds of bullets from every position one could (or could not) imagine. The whole scene is shown in slow motion
and some of the camera angles that are used resemble any given ego-shooter perspective of popular computer games, resulting in what John Stratton calls “a pornography of stylish and stylized violence” (38). The scene ends with Neo and
Trinity escaping via the escalator blowing up the lobby in a highly digitally animated explosion. Reality here has become more like a video game in which everything is designed to look spectacular and aesthetic.
This concept is further developed in the following scenes in which Neo frees
Morpheus. The fights look and sound sensational and the excessive use of special
effects goes to show that the reality of the matrix cannot be taken for granted. As
Andrew Shail writes, “the matrix is the place where a body can move with total
freedom in three dimensions, dress cool, possess all the equipment it needs, fight
bloodlessly, communicate without limitations, and be both omnipotent and extremely graceful” (23).
55
This questioning of reality in the matrix reaches its peak in the scene in which
Neo stops the bullets because here it is finally clear that the portrayed reality is no
longer bound to any rules whatsoever. It can easily be altered by Neo in any desirable way, while we as the audience “see the world through his eyes, eyes that create a freeze-frame effect out of ‘bullet-time’ speed” (Ndalianis 5).
But what about the “real world” as opposed to the matrix? It is full of special
effects, but in contrast to the matrix, in which the effects de-familiarize the familiar, they serve to give all things an ordinary look. Cinematographer Bill Pope admits that “the future world is cold, dark, and riddled with lighting” and that “lighting [was left] a bit bluer and [was] made … dark as hell,” resulting in “the future
reality [to look] very grimy” (qtd. in Lutzka 122). Nevertheless, (computer animated) special effects still make everything look ordinary, as the ship and clothing,
for example, have a strikingly used look, making even the most science fictional
apparatuses like hovercrafts floating on electromagnetic fields seem part of everyday life in this (future) world. The otherwise perfectly real-looking world of the
matrix is only made unappealing to the audience by the (grayish-)green filter and
by the excessive use of computer animated special effects in amazingly spectacular-looking fight scenes.
Yet the one question that remains is whether the “real world” of the movie is
just another computer animated reality like the matrix and as such merely another
form of control by the machines. Especially the two sequels offer a lot of support
for such a thesis since Neo, for example, is eventually not only able to exercise his
“superpowers” inside the matrix but also outside of it, in the supposedly “real”
world. Furthermore, already The Matrix, the first movie of the trilogy “frequently
undermines the idea that the Real World is anything other than an illusion as potent as the Matrix” (Wood 121) by an excessive use of special effects, special colors and lighting as I have described above. Unfortunately, neither the first Matrix
movie nor the two sequels provide a clear answer to this highly interesting question. Despite the fact that special effects play a much more obvious role inside the
matrix, the “real” world is also full of them. As Avlish Wood has pointed out,
until the very end of the whole trilogy, “the Real World and the Matrix are no
more or less real than each other” (125).
Bullet Time and Its Relation to Pace
While The Matrix in general features an excessive use of special effects, there is
one single effect that stands out due to its revolutionary character. This effect is
called bullet time. I do not want to elaborate on the history of this special effect
but would like to point out that it originated in Japanese manga comics. This fact
is important because it accounts for the basic idea behind bullet time, which is its
central technique to capture movement not with one movie camera, but with
many by putting together still images made by picture cameras. In doing so, this
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Dennis Edelmann
effect very much resembles the creation of any given cartoon as “it takes the attributes of full-cell animation, only with people, not characters” (Gaeta, “What is
Bullet Time?”).
The creation of a scene in bullet time is a complex procedure. The first step is
to make a fully digital computer animation of the whole scene that is to be shown.
Just like a regular storyboard, this animation helps to visualize the character’s actions and the movement of the camera and camera angles. In a second step, 120
picture cameras and two motion picture cameras are set up in a circle (or any
other desired form) with a green-screen surrounding them. The two motion picture cameras, placed on opposing sides, mark the start and the end of the movement. Each picture camera captures a single frame, which is mixed with supporting digital frames in the next step. Together, all the single frames form the whole
movement, and make it look as if there was just one single motion picture camera
circling around the action.1
The actors who perform their movements within the green-screen surrounding held by wires are thus captured frame by frame, and everything is then put
together on the computer. As every frame exists separately, there is significant
freedom as to how the particular scene or movement is presented virtually. Just as
in cartoons, you can freeze the action by simply staying on one frame, go back and
forth in time between frames, and of course slow down time. The latter is the
technique mostly used in The Matrix, since, as special effects supervisor John
Gaeta has stated “the aim of bullet time was slowing down time to such an extent
that you really see everything around you as clearly as you possibly could” (“What
is Bullet Time?”). The result of this effect, then, is a never-before-seen focus on
the aesthetics of movements and fight scenes. Usually, the bullet times in The Matrix appear within otherwise fast-cut, fast-(camera) moving scenes or sequences
and disrupt the narrative flow quite openly. By using this effect, the directors lay
the focus not on the narrative aspect of the particular scene but on the aesthetics
of the movements themselves. The results are spectacular looking fight scenes in
which every bullet fired or punch dealt seems to be part of a well-planned choreography, which at times very much resembles classical ballet. Just as in ballet, the
characters in The Matrix are able to move in ways beyond the regular moviegoer’s
physical abilities. Taking place in near silence because the pounding music present
in most of the fight scenes is interrupted in the bullet time sequences, this audiovisual spectacular of bullet time leaves the audience marveling at the sheer beauty
of otherwise dull and brutal action scenes.
There is an ongoing discussion about the question whether or not the makers
of The Matrix simply copied already existing ideas and techniques for creating their
bullet time effect. Some critics (who unfortunately pose their criticism anony1
Apparently, the original plan was to strap a rocket onto a motion picture camera and so be able
to capture the whole movement as well, but for obvious reasons this approach has been neglected (Gaeta, “VFX Supervisor”).
57
mously in online chat rooms) say that the effect existed long before The Matrix
and that the Wachowski brothers merely named it differently (although again a
similar effect had already been used in the computer game Max Payne, in which it
had already been called bullet time). Whichever way one puts it, though, the bullet
time effect in The Matrix was revolutionary to cinematography since it offered a
variety of new possibilities to display certain scenes. And actually even Gaeta himself does not claim that it was an invention. Rather, he insists on the fact that for
The Matrix already existing ideas and techniques were optimized in order to create
a “method for capturing ultra slow motion” (“VFX Supervisor”). In this context,
he further explains that “bullet time is a concept created by Larry and Andy W.
which basically means ‘Mind Over Matrix’ and is not the name of a technique
which uses still cameras to make virtual camera paths” (“VFX Supervisor”). Regardless of its name, even Gaeta himself claimed that as a filmic technique the
effect would “be as revolutionary as cameras coming from cranes to steady cams
…,” because “cameras are [now] broken from the subject matter, virtual” (“What
is Bullet Time?”). Most significantly, Gaeta adds that “computers brought the next
step to cinematography” (“What is Bullet Time?”). This is a fact that is definitely
verifiable and thus will be the focus of the next part of my paper.
Influences of The Matrix on Science Fiction Films and the
Movie Industry
As I have initially stated, science fiction films often rely on special effects. Technological advancements hence allow for a constant evolving of the quality and
complexity of these special effects. It is always people like John Gaeta and his
associates who push the limits of movies’ visuals and cinematography.
Of course, any new technology or filmic technique relies heavily on preceding
movies, since it is always the case that certain procedures are adapted or optimized. Thus, one could argue that if The Matrix had not been made, there would
have been some other movie pushing digital effects and film-making to the next
level. But the fact that The Matrix beat Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace,
which was released in the same year, in the race for the Oscar for best visual effects, strongly suggests that the effects used in The Matrix were indeed special and
groundbreaking.
The Matrix is situated within a long tradition and constant evolution of digitally
animated surroundings, characters and movements. However, it was the first
movie to work with camera angles that are not dependent on a fixed point but
allow for an independent, digitally constructed movement of the camera giving the
audience a much more intense experience of being inside the action as well as
making supposedly unrealistic movements look authentic. In doing so, The Matrix
gave way to a flood of film adaptations of superhero comics such as Spider Man
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Dennis Edelmann
(2002/2004/2007), Hellboy (2004) or Van Helsing (2004). As an example, think of
the way Spider-Man is flying through the skyscraper canyons of New York City
and how realistic his movements and the camera angle following him look. Upon
watching the scene, one could be inclined to believe that a “Spider-Man” could
actually exist and exercise such movements.
In addition, The Matrix has pushed the science fiction film into a whole new
direction with – as Marvin Keith Booker describes it – “its combination of a
thoughtful science fiction premise with high action sequences” (252). Since action
is not a requirement for a science fiction film, it becomes quite clear that such an
excessive use of brutal and yet aesthetic-looking action scenes as is the case in The
Matrix is special and that it takes the subgenre of “action science fiction” to a new
level. An example for this is the movie The Island (2005), in which there is a freeway-action scene that resembles The Matrix’s action scenes to almost a hundred
percent.
But this significantly aesthetic portrayal of action also affected other (action)
movies. The single special effect which has been used and parodied the most is of
course bullet time. Movies such as Scary Movie (2000) and Shrek (2001), as well as
cartoon series like The Simpsons or Family Guy have made fun of bullet time. Also,
the idea of bullet time showing high action in an exceedingly aesthetic manner has
become quite ordinary in action movies today. Some of the movies which actually
use a classic bullet time sequence include Blade 1+2 (1998/2002), Charlie’s Angels
(2000/2003), Password Swordfish (2001) and Bad Boys 2 (2003).
In addition, the bullet time effect “crossed formal boundaries into TV ads,
music videos and computer games” (Rehak 28). Examples include BMW commercials, and the Resident Evil computer game series. In this context again, however, Bob Rehak claims that “once detached from the narrative, characters, and
mise en scene of the original Matrix, bullet time no longer seemed astonishing but
hackneyed” (46). This adaptation of the bullet time effect by science fiction and
action films presented the makers of he Matrix Trilogy with difficulties, because
bullet time now had to become even more spectacular in order to achieve the
same kind of reaction in the moviegoers.
The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions both were released in 2003 and
again took the idea of an aesthetic display of action to a new dimension. The bullet time effect had been optimized by making it even more digital, allowing for the
realization of even more unfamiliar camera movements as well as character’s actions, peaking in a full-out digital “super battle” between Neo and Smith at the
end of the trilogy. Naturally, this evolution of special effects again marked the
next step in cinematography, with fight scenes now becoming more and more
fully digitally animated. But the two sequels nevertheless failed to provoke the
same kind of cultural impact. Both fans and scholars saw the increased digitalization of the bullet time effect and other action scenes as rather negative, since “the
sequels’ visual effects, whose abstraction, excess, and artificial cleanliness left au-
59
diences confused and unsatisfied” (Rehak 46). What had worked so brilliantly with
bullet time in the first Matrix movie now just seemed to be too much, because “by
taking effects to the next level, The Matrix makers were outdone by their own
success” (Rehak 46).
Conclusion
The Matrix makes use of special effects in a way that no (science fiction) movie
had done before. On the visual (and narrative) level, the gradually dispersed computer-generated effects together with certain film techniques (color filter, cutting
and lighting) lead the viewer to doubt the reality presented in the movie. Once the
idea of the matrix is established, reality in it becomes surreal, with effects like bullet time constantly disrupting the natural relation of time and action, while at the
same time special effects serve to familiarize the unfamiliar in the “real world” of
the movie. According to Dan North, the result is that “spectators are not asked to
marvel at an independent simulacrum, but at the discrepancy between the real and
its mimic” (49). Inside the matrix, however, it is mostly the bullet time effect that
is responsible for a revolutionary glorification of action scenes. For the first time
in a (science fiction) movie, action is portrayed as highly aesthetic and almost ballet-like in nature. This concept has been parodied increasingly and ultimately could
not even be topped appropriately by the makers in the two Matrix sequels. Nevertheless, what remained is the idea of portraying even the most brutal action scenes
as aesthetic as possible, an approach which not only tipped the science fiction film
into a whole new direction, but as of today has become a standard in (action) films
in general.
Films Cited
Bad Boys 2. Dir. Michael Bay. Perf. Martin Lawrence, Will Smith and Jordi Mollà. Sony
Pictures Home Entertainment, 2004. DVD.
Blade 1. Dir. Stephen Norrington. Perf. Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff and Kris
Kristofferson. Universum Film GmbH, 1999. DVD.
Blade 2. Dir. Guillermo Del Toro. Perf. Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson and Ron
Perlman. Warner Home Video, 2002. DVD.
Charlie’s Angels. Dir. Joseph McGinty Nichol. Perf. Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore
and Lucy Liu. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2002. DVD.
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Dir. Edward Shearmur. Perf. Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2003. DVD.
Password: Swordfish. Dir. Christopher Young and Paul Oakenfold. Perf. John Travolta,
Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry. Warner Home Video, 2003. DVD.
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Dennis Edelmann
Scary Movie. Dir. Keenen Ivory Wayans. Perf. Jon Abrahams, Shannon Elizabeth and
Cheri Oteri. Highlight, 2002. DVD.
Shrek. Dir. Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. Paramount Home Entertainment,
2006. DVD.
Spider-Man. Dir. Sam Raimi. Perf. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe.
Sony Pictures Home Enterteainment, 2004. DVD.
The Island. Dir. Michael Bay. Perf. Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson and Djimon
Hounsou. Warner Home Video, 2006. DVD.
The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss. Warner Home Video, 1999. DVD.
The Matrix Reloaded. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Perf. Keanu
Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss. Warner Home Video, 2006.
DVD.
The Matrix Revolutions. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Perf. Keanu
Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss. Warner Home Video, 2006.
DVD.
Works Cited
Booker, Marvin Keith. “The Matrix.” Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American
Culture. Westport, CO: Praeger, 2006. 247-63. Print.
Gaeta, John. “The Matrix VFX Supervisor speaks about the impact of ‘Bullet Time.’”
MovieWeb.com. 12 Nov. 2002. Web. 01 Aug. 2009. <http://www.movieweb.com/
news/NE76md8eb0jw99>. Web.
---. “What is bullet time?” The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski.
Perf. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss. DVD. Warner
Home Video, 1999. Print.
Lutzka, Sven. “Simulacra, Simulation and The Matrix.” The Matrix in Theory. Eds.
Myriam Diocratetz and Stefan Herbrechter. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi,
2006. 113-29. Print.
Ndalianis, Angela. “The Frenzy of the Visible: Spectacle and Motion in the Era of the
Digital.” Senses of Cinema 3 (Feb. 2000): n. pag. Web. 25 Jan. 2010. <http://arch
ive.sensesofcinema.com contents/00/3/matrix.html>.
North, Dan. “Virtual Actors, Spectacle and Special Effects: Kung Fu Meets ‘All That
CGI Bullshit.’” The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded. Ed. Stacy Gillis. London:
Wallflower, 2005. 48-61. Print.
“Reality.” Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2005. Print.
Rehak, Bob. “The Migration of Forms: Bullet Time as Microgenre”. Film Criticism 32.1
(Fall 2007): 26-48. Print.
61
Shail, Andrew. “’You hear about them all the time’: A Genealogy of the Sentient Program.” The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded. Ed. Stacy Gillis. London: Wallflower,
2005. 23-35. Print.
Stratton, John. “So Tonight I’m Gonna Party Like It’s 1999: Looking Forward to The
Matrix.” The Matrix in Theory. Eds. Myriam Diocratetz and Stefan Herbrechter.
Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2006. 27-51. Print.
Wood, Aylish. “The Collapse of Reality and Illusion in The Matrix.” Action and Adventure Cinema. Ed. Yvonne Tasker. London: Routledge, 2004. 119-29. Print.
Fabian Grumbrecht
“What are you doing, Dave?”:
The Confrontation of Dave Bowman and HAL 9000
in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
Introduction
The genre of Science Fiction film has been frequently marked by heated battles
between human beings and various menacing forces. These forces are mainly
embodied by alien races (Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1956], Alien [1979]), mutated
life forms (Tarantula [1955]), dystopian regimes (Brazil [1985], Nineteen Eighty-Four
[1984]), or rebellious artificial intelligences. Within the last-mentioned category,
one example of a computer turning against human beings can be found in Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), namely: HAL 9000. In addition to the
computer’s menacing act of murdering four astronauts, scholars and critics like
Michael Mateas have focused on HAL’s apparent “emotional and psychological
depth” (106). The computer appears in the film’s second part “JUPITER MISSION, 18 MONTHS LATER.” Barton Palmer has pointed out that this part “is
handled in more or less traditional Hollywood fashion” (19). Moreover, Mateas
adds that HAL primarily serves “a function within the plot” (123) until he is deactivated by the astronaut Dave Bowman. HAL’s unexpected and enigmatic malfunction turns the computer into the antagonist of the film when it attempts to
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kill the crew of the spaceship Discovery. Consequently, Dave Bowman, as the only
surviving crewmember, is generally identified as HAL’s counterpart. This constellation culminates in a confrontation, in which the astronaut wants to turn the
computer off.
In this chapter I would like to analyze the confrontation of Dave Bowman and
HAL, because it may not necessarily be classified as a “big battle” (Mamber 64).
Instead, the showdown between HAL and the astronaut is not marked by physical
violence. It is rather portrayed in a unique way as an almost trivial act of shutting
down a technical apparatus, an act that is completely devoid of violent struggles.
Nevertheless, the confrontation is subtly enhanced on the visual and aural levels.
Consequently, this article will focus on HAL’s status as an antagonist to Dave
Bowman, followed by the analysis of the visual and aural presentation of the confrontation and interaction of the two characters on the level of plot.
HAL’s Status as an Antagonist
HAL’s antagonistic status can be inferred from Dave Bowman’s position as a
protagonist, which is established in the course of the plot and emphasized during
the confrontation. At first, Dave Bowman is introduced as the equal of his fellow
astronaut Frank Poole (Booker 86), but when Dave becomes the only surviving
member of the crew on board of the Discovery, the focus on him as the protagonist
increases in a significant way. Furthermore, Dave is the only character who arrives
at Jupiter – the place the human characters want to reach –, and in the end becomes the Star Child. These aspects do not only single him out from his fellow
astronauts but also from the scientist squad of Dr. Heywood Floyd, because their
progress is either thwarted (in the case of the other astronauts) or presented en
passant (in the case of Dr. Floyd, who discovers the monolith located on the moon
but is not part of the monumental expedition to Jupiter).
While the plot of the whole film seems to underline Dave Bowman’s position
as a protagonist, the “revolt” (Booker 87) of HAL resembles an obstacle to the
astronaut’s progress: According to Philip Kuberski, the effect of “HAL’s cold
violence” (69) on Dave “prepares him for the psychic journey” (69) after the
computer’s demise. Therefore, HAL is indirectly marked as an antagonist and,
according to Mateas, “functions as a character within the narrative machinery”
(116) by counteracting Dave.
The Visual Level
The actual showdown between the astronaut and the computer sets in after Dave
has managed to leave his space pod and returns to the Discovery. Meanwhile HAL
has succeeded in killing the other astronauts, but its strategy of murdering Dave
65
has failed. While the computer has ambushed and directly attacked the rest of the
crew (the scientists in their sleep and Poole by a separation of his air hose in outer
space), Dave has enough time to intrude into the spaceship after HAL has denied
him access. The fact that Dave survives underlines his pivotal status in the plot
and leads to the actual confrontation between him and the antagonistic computer.
While the astronaut is on his way to HAL’s core the low angle of the camera
dominates the scene. Mostly over-the-shoulder shots and medium shots are given
by what Kevin L. Stoehr describes as “a subjective use of handheld camera … that
reveals Bowman’s unique personal perspective and emotional context” (124).
Then Dave climbs up the ladder, and when he walks through the crammed spaces,
he seems to tower over the audience. Hence, the camera does not only mediate
Dave’s point of view but also assumes an external perspective. This perspective is
influenced by the narrow architecture of the Discovery and makes the protagonist
appear in an almost imposing way until he arrives at the small door which leads to
the computer’s brain room.
The first shot inside of the computer’s core is taken from the actual point of
view of the virtually omnipresent and “bodiless HAL” (Mateas 111). Situated in
what Stephen Mamber describes as the “geometrical space … of the memory
core” (64), the technical devices and modules reveal the computer’s ‘physical’
location. By entering this room, the protagonist is able to participate in a genuine
‘confrontation’ with an artificial intelligence that seems to be impalpable.
In contrast to the previous sequences of this section, the iconic shot of
“HAL’s red-lit eyeball” (Stoehr 127) is not depicted as extensively as before. Earlier in the film, HAL’s red eye functioned as the main visualization of the artificial
intelligence as a character. It was furthermore accompanied by the use of a fisheye
lens that emphasized the look through HAL’s eye. The computer’s “subjective
view” (Mateas 108) is completely abandoned during the showdown. By neglecting
the tendency to “use his vision in pursuit of goals” (Mateas 108), HAL seems to
focus on the use of its voice instead.1 Full shots of Dave’s body in the core alternate with shots of his body reflection in the artificial eye and serve thus to portray
the two as opponents.
According to J. P. Telotte, the protagonist “moves at odd angles and even
floats … as he deactivates HAL” (49). This is especially evident when Dave
Bowman approaches the computer’s modules: Suddenly, the camera’s position
changes twice, thus evoking the illusion that Dave does no longer float in a horizontal position while facing the room’s ceiling. After a sudden cut, the camera’s
position has turned upside down and after a second cut, a medium shot portrays
Dave sideways. He seems to stand vertically in front of the modules now. This
change in position seems to establish a more matter-of-fact portrayal of the astronaut’s following actions, which rather resemble a customary behavior instead of a
1
HAL’s voice is analyzed in section four of this article.
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confrontation with an antagonist in a state of weightlessness. An over-theshoulder shot reveals the various modules Dave works on in order to shut HAL
down. During this process, a close-up of Dave’s head gives way to his neutral
facial expressions while the technical devices are mirrored in the visor of his helmet, resembling the apex of the way the two characters “are superimposed several
times” (Mamber 64).
On the whole, the depictions of Dave seem to prevail on the visual level. But
how could the widespread interpretation of HAL’s “establishing empathy with the
audience” (Mateas 116) have been accepted and emphasized, when the computer’s
visual point of view (as an obvious device for creating identification with a character in a film) is neglected in this sequence? The reasons for this interpretation may
be found on the aural level.
The Level of Sound
There is no underlying soundtrack; instead the constant noise of the air supply
and breathing (introduced during Poole’s examination of “the ship’s AE-35 unit”
[Booker 78]) dominate this section of the film. These sounds replace dramatizing
music which is mostly used in films of various genres in order to underline the
final confrontation of protagonist and antagonist. The “vivid contrast between
sound and silence” (Landy 96) used during the death of Poole and the other astronauts is no longer employed. In addition to his own breathing, Dave and the
audience also perceive HAL’s “range of natural language competencies” (Mateas
107), performed by Douglas Rain.
Once the computer’s iconic visual representation (i.e. the red eye) is no longer
predominating, HAL is mainly embodied by its voice. HAL tries to apologize for
its actions and to reason with Dave, for example by saying, “I know I’ve made
some very poor decisions recently.” Two interpretations regarding the effect of
the computer’s utterances may be contrasted: The idea that the computer’s demise
evokes “sadness and pity” (Mateas 116) in the audience as part of an “ambiguous
double reading” (Mateas 110), and the view that “HAL’s actions mime human
limitations in thinking and decision making” (Landy 96). It can be argued that the
aural level contradicts the visual level when Dave enters the brain room. HAL’s
voice and remarks are used to conceal what the sight of the modules and technical
devices in its core affirms. HAL may be able to use “general language and reasoning capabilities” (Mateas 107) and he seems to voice “inner conflicts” (107), yet
the pleading, “disembodied voice” (Landy 96) contrasts with the artificial structure
of the computer’s electronic nerve centre. As a result, it becomes obvious that
HAL is a highly developed computer instead of a living creature. In his role as
antagonist, HAL uses its voice as a tool of deception and manipulation, but this
strategy is exposed when Dave confronts the actual origin of the voice (i.e. the
artificial structure of the modules).
67
Because of the combination of sounds (especially the stream of oxygen, the
breathing, and HAL’s voice), Dave’s point of view dominates on the aural level.
All the sounds he perceives in his suit are transmitted and the absence of a soundtrack or sound effects contributes to a sober and plain presentation, which is devoid of commentative sounds that are usually employed in films in order to increase tension. Dramatizing aural effects are not used in an excessive manner;
even Dave’s way of breathing seems to be controlled: He does not hyperventilate;
instead his breathing is determined by his physical actions (e.g. climbing up the
ladder, walking through the corridors, floating through the brain room).
The Interaction of HAL and Dave
The final and confrontational encounter of protagonist and antagonist is marked
by a number of peculiarities. HAL tries to counteract and stop Dave Bowman by
corresponding to his emotions instead of using brute violence, although the computer killed Frank Poole and the three sleeping crewmen. According to Telotte, it
seems as if HAL virtually “controls all functions, including life support on board
Discovery” (48). Yet after Dave has managed to enter the ship again, the computer
resumes a non-violent strategy.
Therefore, HAL’s control over the ship does not turn into a life-threatening
danger for Dave. Although the human characters are “dependent for their life
functions on” (Landy 97) the computer, they have to assume a special state before
they fall victim to his “goal-driven behavior” (Mateas 108): The three hibernating
scientists are killed while they are defenceless and Poole has to exit the Discovery in
his space suit before HAL attacks him by seizing control over his space pod.
Moreover, the computer’s attempt at eliminating Dave also involves excluding
him from the spaceship once HAL sees that Bowman has forgotten his helmet.
Yet the protagonist’s return to the spaceship does not trigger a similar attempt
targeted at HAL. Although HAL’s “function is to manage the ship” as Mateas
puts it (107), he either has to make use of his victims’ defenceless and inactive
state (in the case of the sleeping astronauts), or he has to lure them into space (in
the case of Frank Poole and Dave Bowman) instead of violently confronting them
on board of the Discovery. Having overcome the computer’s insidiousness, Dave’s
special status as the protagonist of the film is implicitly underlined while HAL
changes its strategy.
Dave does not react to HAL’s voice (until he answers the antagonist’s offer to
sing a song). Instead, the protagonist proceeds to shut down the computer in a
matter-of-fact way, acting extremely unfazed and seemingly without showing any
emotions. While this behavior of Dave Bowman (and also Frank Poole) let HAL
appear “more human and empathetic” (Stoehr 125) in the previous sequences,
now it makes the portrayal of the confrontation appear almost trivial. It may be
doubted that Palmer’s definition of the confrontation as a “struggle, which is
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more physical than psychological and climaxes in … violence” (19) is appropriate.
Landy points out that no “vivid and excessive images of mutilation” (97) are employed: HAL is not destroyed in the course of a heated battle, but turned off very
soberly. Likewise, the astronaut has to protect himself mentally from succumbing
to HAL’s simulated reasoning and emotions (e.g. “I’m afraid, Dave”) and is not
confronted with some kind of a violent assault unleashed by the computer. What
some critics and scholars who tend to humanize the antagonist describe as an act
of “lobotomizing HAL’s computer brain” (Landy 96) is actually the deactivation
of “HAL’s higher mental functions” (Mateas 116), while HAL’s lack of another
opportunity to kill Bowman makes him use his voice as a device of selfprotection.
Although Landy argues that “Dave’s action suggests that his motives are
tinged with vengefulness” (97), he neither smashes the artificial eye or modules,
nor does he tear them out in a fit of rage. Some pragmatic reasons may be given
for this behaviour. Managing to ignore the computer’s voice, the protagonist is
not able to deactivate HAL in frenzy or to completely destroy the computer without risking his own life (or the success of the mission). In this respect, “the film’s
tampering with conventional cinematic language” (97) as pointed out by Landy is
determined by the circumstances given in the fictional world, because the computer’s “primary function is to manage the ship and participate in the mission”
(Mateas 107). Consequently, Dave’s very calm reaction to HAL’s live-threatening
behavior does not only remain peculiar on the visual and aural level, but is also
motivated on the level of plot. Although all physical actions in the final confrontation are enacted by the protagonist, HAL is actually not “heroically confronted
and destroyed” (Kuberski 70) in a battle but simply shut down. What Landy describes as Dave’s apparent “precipitousness” (97) only seems to make the interaction of the two characters appear one-sided because of the computer’s apologetic
and reasoning verbal strategy, which, however, only enhances the peculiarity on
the level of sound.
Only when Dave Bowman begins to shut down HAL’s memory circuit, one
can assume that the protagonist has won the battle against the computer. Booker
interprets the way HAL’s voice slows down while singing “Daisy” as “a reversion
to ‘childhood’” (86). What Booker calls an “almost trance-like” (86) behavior as a
human character on board of the Discovery has allowed Dave to overcome his opponent. Finally, the astronaut answers HAL when the computer’s demise is inevitable and his utterances may not be targeted at deceiving Dave anymore. It is
striking that HAL’s use of its voice in order to prevent the “dismantling” (Palmer
22) does not succeed on the level of plot but influences the audience’s empathy.
Strictly speaking, the spectators are likely to be deluded by HAL, while Bowman
manages to remain unaffected. This is achieved by contrived aspects such as the
computer’s age (Booker 86-87), or the way HAL sings “Daisy” while slowing
down, but without making use of melodramatic elements. Only at this point
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(when the antagonist’s decline has already set in), the spectators’ possible “sadness
and pity” (Mateas 116) may be partly justifiable. Yet, Hal’s status as the film’s
antagonist, as well as what Landy calls “malevolent instigator of violence” (96),
should not be completely overshadowed by this fairly one-sided and emotional
reading.
Conclusion
In the course of 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is no heated battle between the protagonist and the villain. HAL is not destroyed, but turned off in a rather sober and
trivial way. The unemotional portrayal of the showdown is achieved by the interaction of the visual and aural levels which both correspond and contrast. The
visualization of the sequence is dominated by the camera focus on Dave Bowman’s actions (e.g. by the use of over-the-shoulder shots and changing camera
positions in between the shots) instead of assuming the computer’s point of view.
On the level of sound, the astronaut’s perspective is underlined by the transmission of all aspects influencing his aural perception in the space suit. Furthermore,
HAL attempts to exert psychological influence on the protagonist. The computer
is unable to murder the astronaut because Dave is not in a state of hibernation
and because he has re-entered the spaceship Discovery. Faced with the fact that
Dave is on his way to HAL’s core, the computer tries to prevent its disconnection
by uttering apologies and remorse. Likewise, the conditions on board of the
spaceship require that Dave faces the antagonist in a non-violent and calm way.
On the surface, a simple and obvious contrast between the almost “robotic”
(Booker 86) actions of the astronaut and a computer who “seems more human
and empathetic” (Stoehr 125) is established. However, the portrayal of HAL’s
core reveals that the computer’ emotions, which fail to deceive Dave Bowman, are
actually simulated. As a result, a certain ambiguity and a hint at banality are established by the cinematography of the showdown: The fact that the computer is
turned off in a calm and matter-of-fact manner evokes trivial overtones. Dave’s
portrayal within the core thus makes him resemble a computer operator rather
than an astronaut fighting for his life against a murderous artificial intelligence.
The two characters are confronted in the only section of the film that makes
use of a conventional Hollywood-type plot (Palmer 19). However, the realization
of the actual showdown does not come across as bombastic or dramatic. Consequently, the contrast between the plot and the way the showdown is displayed is
highlighted even more, because the trivial and non-violent approach is usually not
part of traditional Hollywood movies which mainly rely on physical clashes and
vivid destruction.
The non-violent confrontation can be seen as an innovation and it has remained exceptional in the genre of Science Fiction film to this date. Hence, the
tactics and demises of other vile artificial intelligences in motion pictures of the
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following decades: Proteus IV in Demon Seed (1977) turns a house into a dangerous
environment in order to trap and impregnate his inventor’s wife. Similar to HAL,
this villainous computer is also embodied by a strikingly memorable voice (provided by Robert Vaughn). At the same time, though, it contrasts with the antagonist of 2001: A Space Odyssey by making brutal use of lasers and arm-like devices.
Moreover, the Ultimate Computer in Superman III (1983) does not voice its concerns, but turns a human being into an android and emits rays in order to prevent
the other characters from turning it off. As another very famous example of an
antagonistic computer system, Skynet in The Terminator (1984) makes use of androids and robots in order to attack mankind and, as the main kernel of the film’s
plot, sends them back in time in order to indemnify its own existence and to endanger the human characters. All of those antagonistic computers make use of
violence and also the protagonists in the respective films tend to defend themselves by sheer force. While HAL’s defeat has sometimes been parodied and
mocked in episodes of American TV-series like Parker Lewis Can’t Lose (1991) or
The Simpsons (2001), the final interaction between HAL and Dave has not become
a paragon for showdowns between humans and computers moving beyond conventional (and primarily physical) clashes. As a result, the filmic realization of the
showdown is exemplary for the whole film in having “no peers or direct successors” (Booker 88).
Films Cited
2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester. MGM, 1968. DVD.
Demon Seed. Dir. Donald Cammell. Perf. Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver, Gerrit Graham.
MGM, 1977. DVD.
Superman III. Dir. Richard Lester. Perf. Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Jackie Cooper. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1983. DVD.
The Terminator. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn,
Linda Hamilton. Orion Pictures, 1984. DVD.
Works Cited
Booker, Marvin Keith. “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film
and American Culture. Westport, CO: Praeger, 2006. 75-89. Print.
Kuberski, Philip. “Kubrick’s Odyssey: Myth, Technology, Gnosis.” Arizona Quarterly:
A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 64.3 (2008 Autumn): 51-73.
Print.
71
Landy, Marcia. “The Cinematographic Brain in 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays. Ed. Robert Kolker. New York: Oxford UP,
2006. 87-104. Print.
Mamber, Stephen. “Kubrick in Space.” Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New
Essays. Ed. Robert Kolker. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 55-68. Print.
Mateas, Michael. “Reading HAL.” Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays.
Ed. Robert Kolker. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 105-25. Print.
Palmer, Barton. “2001: The Critical Reception and the Generation Gap.” Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays. Ed. Robert Kolker. New York: Oxford
UP, 2006. 13-27. Print.
Stoehr, Kevin L. “2001: A Philosophical Odyssey.” The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film.
Ed. Stephen M. Sanders. Lexington, KY: U of Kentucky P, 2008. 119-33. Print.
Telotte, J. P. “The Gravity of 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space
Odyssey: New Essays. Ed. Robert Kolker. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 43-53.
Print.
Part II
Social and Political Commentaries
Niklas Franzen
“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” as Social
Reflection? The Success of the Sequence Among
Young Adults of the Counterculture
Introduction
Stanley Kubrick’s motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most successful and legendary films in cinematic history. Its release in 1968 earned the thirdbest box office gross and a total of $138 with its initial and subsequent releases. It
has been acknowledged as one of the greatest movies ever made, and in 2002 the
British film magazine Sight & Sound ranked it among the top ten films of all times.
2001 has marked “a turning point in the science fiction film genre” (Cornea
87) and by Hollywood standards it certainly was a radical innovation. The film
attracted a remarkable amount of critical attention, “but critical opinion was
markedly divided when it was first shown in America” (83). The controversy
about the film becomes especially apparent in the final sequence, “Jupiter and
Beyond the Infinite.” Therefore I will narrow down my analysis to this particular
sequence.
“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite,” also known as the Stargate sequence, begins
with impressive shots of a black monolith in orbit around Jupiter. When astronaut
Dave Bowman leaves the spacecraft in a pod to approach the monolith, he finds
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Niklas Franzen
himself suddenly racing through a tunnel of colorful light sequences. During the
journey, strange astronomical entities are shown and the voyage concludes with
views on the surface of an oddly colored planet. Eventually Bowman is shown in a
room decorated in old Renaissance style, where he discovers older versions of
himself, with the visual angle each time switching to the older Bowman. Ultimately an ancient and deceasing Bowman is shown lying in a canopy bed, with a
black monolith on its foot, and the old Bowman is transformed into a fetus-like
creature, the Star Child. The last scene shows the Star Child floating in space,
looking down on earth.
According to Christine Cornea, the release of 2001 in 1968 “responded to the
zeitgeist of the era and assured its eventual success at the box office” (83). Barton
R. Palmer has pointed out that especially young people flocked the country’s theaters, “turning the film’s exhibition into one of the signal cultural events of the
decade” (13).
In this paper, I will pursue the questions of why “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” in particular has been so popular among young viewers and of how the sequence became a means of opposition and subversion of the 1960s counterculture. I will therefore begin my analysis with an account of the historical
background of the 1960s. After that, I will closely examine the sequence, considering psychedelic, drug-related interpretations and the use of subversive cinematic
devices. By discussing the social perception of the film, I will then seek to answer
my initial question and conclude my paper with a summary of my findings.
From Frustration to Counterculture: The USA in the 1960s
The decade began with optimism carried over from the economic boom of the
1950s, and was enhanced by newly elected President John F. Kennedy. Events like
the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world to the edge of nuclear annihilation, the assassinations of major figureheads (John F. Kennedy, 1963; Malcolm X,
1965) and America’s entering the Vietnam War however shattered much of this
optimism in the mid 1960s.
The attempt to demonstrate unity in the space race against the Soviet Union
and in the intensifying Cold War failed, and a variety of protest movements swept
American society, challenging government policies and middle-class values and
lifestyles. Bruce J. Schulman claims that “[f]rustration and alienation pushed
Americans toward the counter-culture, but also exerted a strong pull of its own:
the conviction that it was possible to drop out of the polluted, corrupt mainstream
and live according to one’s values” (qtd. in Cornea 89-90).
The year 1968 is often considered as the peak of social and political unrest and
to this day serves as symbol for revolt and for the conflict between what was regarded as counterculture and establishment. Stanley Kubrick’s controversial film
2001: A Space Odyssey was also released in this tumultuous year. I will therefore
“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” as Social Reflection?
77
focus my examination of the historical background particularly on the year 1968.
My argumentation will be based on the analysis of three major events that heavily
affected the American social development and turned 1968 to the year that
changed history.
Vietnam: Between Trauma and Protest
On the 30th of January 1968 the North Vietnamese troops launched a major military offensive against South Vietnam and their American allies, what later came to
be known as the ‘Tet Offensive.’ The offensive ended with nearly 4000 U.S.
troops dead and with the irrevocable conviction that this war was not going to be
won. The military intervention of the USA in Vietnam began in 1965 following a
war fought between South Vietnam and communist North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) that sought to overthrow the Southern Vietnamese
government and unify the country under rule of Ho Chi Mihn. The United States
supported Southern Vietnamese premier Ngo Dihn Diem because of their Cold
War policy of containment of the spread of communism. The belief of a great
number of Americans was that “if South Vietnam fell to communism, it would
then spread to neighbouring countries, which would fall like a row of dominoes”
(Trevino 122). By the end of 1968 more than half a million American soldiers
were in action.
The public opposition to the war in Vietnam began in 1964 on college campuses across the country and increased in size and intensity as the Vietnam conflict continued and American soldiers were shipped out and died. The most visible
representatives of the antiwar movement were the hippies. With their recognizable
appearance and rejection of mainstream behavior and culture, the so-called flower
people rebelled peacefully against the conservative foundations of U.S. society
with a mix of rock music, drug use and frequent sexual activities.
But not only had the hippies taken to the streets at that time to protest U.S.
involvement in the conflict and the war-mongering political culture. Members of
the New Left, black civil rights activist and even soldiers and veterans also expressed their fierce opposition to the U.S. American military policy. When in
March 1968 an American Army Division massacred hundreds of civilians in the
village of My Lai, the American public was outraged and the peace movement
reached its peak of strength. As Chino Fernandez puts it: “At the same time the
Vietnam War was raging, the seeds of change were being sown in homeland
United States” (112).
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Niklas Franzen
Civil Rights Movement: Hope and Setback
On the evening of April 4th 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered by James
Earl Ray on the balcony of Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. In response, violence
broke out in many American cities and over forty people were killed. A nation was
stunned and the Civil Rights Movement had to mourn the loss of one of its symbolic figures.
The Civil Rights Movement grew out of the struggle of black Americans to
obtain long denied constitutional rights and to end racial segregation in American
society. In the early 1960s, the movement could produce considerable successes
like the March on Washington, where Baptist priest and civil rights leader Martin
Luther King gave his famous speech “I have a dream”, which was followed by the
signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that prohibited a greater part of discrimination based on race, color and religion. Yet, endeavors to end discrimination in the
United States were continuously overshadowed by terror and persecution against
African Americans and civil rights activists, and by the still visceral racism in the
USA, especially in the South. Organisations like the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) tried to overcome racism and discrimination in a nonviolent way and propagated civil disobedience as a remedy against the political
practice of racial segregation.
Many young blacks, however, held the view that peaceful protests in consideration of the sweeping injustice and daily police brutality would lead to nowhere.
For that reason, many of them were attracted by the militant struggle against discrimination that was led by figures such as Malcolm X, who was a proponent of
separation and self-sufficiency from white America, as opposed to the full integration that people like Martin Luther King advocated. All in all, the protests radicalized in the late 1960s, also due to the advancing activism for civil rights of white
students, leftists and young insurgents, who felt associated with the arising counterculture. Or, as Luca Prono states: “The campaign for civil rights was a dynamic
force that shook American society during the whole decade” (189).
Student Protests: From the Campuses to the Streets
In the springtime of the year 1968 protests erupted at Columbia University in
New York when student Bob Feldman discovered Columbia’s affiliation with an
institute closely related to the U.S. Department of Defence, thereby supporting
America’s war in Vietnam. The uprisings, which lasted several weeks, were a part
of student protests all across America and Europe.
The American student activism was born at the University of California in
Berkeley and gave rise to the counterculture of the 1960s, which called into question the basic foundations of American society. The so-called Free Speech Move-
79
ment spread to hundreds of campuses and “was a source of inspiration to activists
in the diverse coalition of the New Left, which gathered civil rights, anti-war,
women’s and gay liberation movements” (Prono 198).
The escalation of violence in Vietnam became a specific target of criticism and
university campuses were the site of anti-war marches, demonstrations and committees. Students demanded the dissociation from institutions which were built on
racism and discrimination and “stressed the importance of genuine human relations as an alternative to the alienation of modern society” (Prono 198). Moreover, the Free Speech Movement was closely linked to the Civil Rights Movement
and called for racial cooperation and integration. Luca Prono concludes that “the
Free Speech Movement had a key role in the development of the 1960s counterculture and the struggle for civil rights” (189). The 1960s, then, can be described
as a time of political and social upheaval and the date of foundation of a counterculture which was about to leave an enormous imprint on the following decades.
Braunstein and Doyle argued that “[t]he Sixties counterculture in the United
States didn’t come out of nowhere” (8). Focusing first on discrimination against
African Americans, the movement soon spread to address issues confronting
other ethnic groups, women, homosexuals and the disabled. Through criticism
about America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and a general suspicion of the
U.S. military policy, the newly formed anti-war movement unsettled the American
establishment. “A general sense of frustration among the young radicals” (Cornea
89), which led to an ultimate breach with the institutional authorities, was cemented after the disappointments over the Democrats support of the war, the
assassinations of key leaders such as Kennedy, King and Malcolm X and a political swing to the right after Richard Nixon’s election in 1968. The contrasts between the rebellious youth and the old-established, conservative faction increasingly intensified and a generation gap developed that was fundamental for the
explanation of Stanley Kubrick’s success and the contrary receptions of the final
sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite”: Between Drugs and
Cinematic Subversion
One of the most commented, disputed and legendary sequences in film history is
“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” in Stanley Kubrick’s motion picture 2001: A
Space Odyssey. But why has especially this sequence been so popular among young
Americans and why did it become an expression of opposition for the 1960s
counterculture?
Many establishment critics such as fantasy writer John Brosnan tried to trace
the sequence’s success merely back to the psychedelic experiences that many intoxicated, young moviegoers had in particular during the final Stargate sequence
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(Cornea 83). Other film critics like Stanley Kauffmann, however, argued that the
success of the sequence cannot simply be explained with hallucinogenic effects
and attributed the adoption of the film by counter-cultural youth movements to
Stanley Kubrick’s unconventionality and his subversive use of cinematic devices
(Palmer 16-17). In the following analysis, I will try to pursue the question to what
extent the sequence’s success among the youthful generation is a product of its
psychedelic and mind-extending effects and to what extent “Jupiter and Beyond
the Infinite” can be considered as a reflection on the social circumstances of the
1960s.
A Literal Trip
The press labelled Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre as a film “for grooving, not understanding,” a “psychedelic experience” and the “ultimate trip” (Chion 43). “Trip”
certainly is a keyword of the 1960s culture as well as of the final sequence in 2001,
which also became known as cosmic trip. And indeed, the film, especially the
Stargate sequence, became a cult attraction among a young generation seeking for
consciousness-raising experiences. Psychedelic drugs, in particular LSD, were
extremely fashionable for the youthful generation and “recreational drug use in
the auditorium was commonly reported” (Palmer 14).
Especially during astronaut Bowman’s rapid journey, reports of altered states
of consciousness and colorful visions seem plausible. The interaction between
multicolored light effects, the conveyance of speed and the depiction of abstract
imagery, accompanied by creepy and frightful sounds of György Ligeti’s “Atmospheres,” made this particular scene so appealing for young viewers seeking for
maximum trip. Referring to the Stargate sequence, film critic Stephen Mamber
states that “[n]o more hallucinatory and dreamlike a segment has ever appeared in
a mainstream film,” and that “2001’s early reputation as a ‘trip’ movie was not
entirely undeserved” (61).
Additionally, director Stanley Kubrick succeeded in enhancing the impression
of a trip with the application of specific cinematic methods. Kubrick deliberately
used the point-of-view shot during the voyage as visual angle to let the spectator
take astronaut Bowman’s position. As a result the literal trip appears more realistic
and personal, and the viewer is directly integrated in the happenings. The application of several jump cuts leads over to close-ups of Dave Bowman’s face. His
facial expression changes intensively in the course of the journey, and his seemingly serene and calm countenance turns into a panic-stricken, fearful face with
widely opened eyes and mouth. Once the journey ends, Bowman seems to be in a
dream-like state close to unconsciousness. Due to the character’s modification of
mental and physical being, parallels with young viewers that had the experience of
a similar but drug-related trip, seems reasonable and logic.
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A term that is frequently used when talking about “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” and altered states of mind is escapism. According to Christine Cornea, the
final sequence, accompanied by chemical intoxication was central to a movement’s
“serious attempts at imagining/creating a different or alternative world” (83-84).
The gentle floating of the black monolith in the universe, in the very first scene of
the sequence, conveyed a feeling of weightlessness on the one hand and invited
young viewers on the other hand to immerse in a world beyond rationality and the
imaginable. During the 20-minute voyage many young viewers abandoned their
touch with reality and certainly also used the sequence to escape from the misery
of the actual world. In the next sections of this chapter, I will elaborate on the
question of what they actually tried to flee from and how their criticism of the
modern world was constituted.
Quite a few young people used the film, particularly the “Jupiter and Beyond
the Infinite” sequence, to turn themselves on under the influence of mindchanging drugs (Cornea 83-83; Palmer 14). For that reason the sequence can be
understood as a social phenomenon of the 1960s youth culture, which lined up in
related forms of cultural entertainment such as rock concerts that functioned with
similar audiovisual tools. In contrast to this mere hedonistic use of the sequence,
the rebellious nature was already at this place indicated by the attempt of a quite
noticeable number of young viewers to apply “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” as
an escapist retreat from the misery of the actual world. Nevertheless, I would call
this sort of subversion rather unintentional. In the next chapter, I will show that
there was indeed direct and conscious use of subversive elements.
Kubrick vs. Hollywood
The recognition of the film as “an attempt at metaphysical philosophy” (Hunter
qtd. in Agel 215) by counter-cultural critics already suggests that the popularity of
“Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” could hardly entirely be explained with its supposedly hallucinogenic effects. However, I will return to critics and perceptions of
the sequence and a more elaborate analysis of the social context later and start my
analysis with Kubrick’s unusual usage of cinematic and stylistic devices.
The most visible subversive element in the depiction of the Stargate sequence
is director Stanley Kubrick’s omission and violation of established industry standards. Film critic and author R. Barton Palmer states that it is hard to imagine
“how Kubrick could have further undermined the ideological presuppositions of
Hollywood storytelling” (16). One of the most obvious breaks with mainstream
conventions in the 25-minutes long sequence is the absence of any kind of dialogue and speaking. Thereby, the traditional narration, with its “narrative driven
by and centred on character” (Palmer 16), and the emphasis on human relations
retreats to the background. As a result, the focus of the sequence shifts to audiovisual impressions.
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A close examination of the character Dave Bowman seems useful here in order to show the distinction between how characters were presented in conventional Hollywood productions and how Kubrick portrayed the character in the
final sequence of 2001. In “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite,” Bowman appears
heteronomous and as subordinate to human evolution. Contrary to characters in
established Hollywood films, Bowman is not depicted as the master of his own
fate but takes up a passive role, whereby he has no active power of intervention.
The effect of this portrayal is that the focus shifts and that the subordination of
humans comes into view once again.
An additional cinematic method is Stanley Kubrick’s use of contrasts and visual extremes. This device becomes particularly apparent in the director’s contrast
between the scenes of the floating monolith and Bowman’s rapid journey. In the
first scene, the shots of the levitating monolith and of Jupiter and its moons, conveys an impression of slowness and gentleness. In contrast to that, in the literal
sense of the word, astronaut Bowman’s colorful voyage implies an opposing feeling of speed, fear and uncertainty.
Another visible contrast is the opposition between the futuristic, abstract and
alien imagery during the journey and the old-fashioned room at the end of the
sequence that seems rather familiar. This fairly unconventional use of contrasts
serves various purposes. Stanley Kubrick provokes, shocks and even tries to ridicule the audience with contrariety, delusion and the depiction of the unexpected.
Furthermore, he defies the Hollywood convention of predictability by showing
the unforeseen. A further implication of this contrastive technique is the absence
of coherence of the story and the causally link of the plot. Thus, this form of depiction serves as another deliberate trespass against Hollywood standards.
Another stylistic device that immediately leaps to the eye and has also been interpreted as breaking with industry conventions is Kubrick’s extraordinary choice
of colors. During Bowman’s voyage, shortly before his landing, various colorful
pictures of a planet are shown and with every cut a new combination of exclusively contrasting, neon colors, is presented. The planet seems alienated by these
artificial and unnatural colors and these images provoke the viewers with their
almost aching intensity and glariness.
Moreover, Stanley Kubrick sends viewers on a journey into the unknown and
irritates them purposely. Kubrick presents pictures that raise essential questions
about life only to leave them ultimately unanswered. Whereas in Hollywood films
the pictures mostly speak for themselves and the viewer’s interpretation is often
determined by a clear message and logical images, the Stargate sequence works in
an entirely different way. There are no clear answers but irritation about the displayed pictures. For instance, why do seven flashing diamonds appear in the sky
above the alien planet or what does the appearance of the Star Child mean? With
the deliberate omission of answers, Kubrick leaves the audience with an ample
scope for personal interpretation, a topic to which I will return.
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The end of the sequence, which is also the end of the movie, distinguishes it
fundamentally from traditional Hollywood film endings: While Hollywood movies
generally end with a narrative closure – be it a happy or tragic ending – “Jupiter
and Beyond the Infinite” works differently. It does not become explicit if the
ending is meant to be happy, neutral or even sad, and also at this point it comes
down to personal interpretation. Bowman’s death does not, as one could have
expected, constitute the ending but the birth of the Star Child, or Bowman’s reincarnation respectively, and Kubrick succeeds once again in provoking irritation
with an unexpected cinematic device. Hence, it can be stated that the Stargate
sequence features a variety of unorthodox cinematic devices that explicitly isolate
the film from established mainstream conventions and also foster the controversial discussion about the sequence.
Perception of the Sequence
The generation gap during the 1960s might not only help to explain the success of
the sequence, “but to an important degree its critical reception as well” (Palmer
17). The discussion about “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” initiated a debate
between a traditional mainstream faction on the one side and the counterculture
on the other. I would argue that this debate about the final sequence of 2001: A
Space Odyssey symbolizes the generation gap and the division of the American society in the 1960s. I will begin my analysis of the perception of the sequence with a
brief examination of the establishment critics. After that, I will present the young
1960s generation’s perception of the sequence and explain why it has been so
popular, particularly among the youth.
Establishment
The majority of conservative film critics of the 1960s could not identify with the
sequence because conventional standards did not apply and they criticized director
Stanley Kubrick blisteringly for his violation of mainstream industry conventions.
Stanley Kaufmann argued that “unlike the usual Hollywood product, it did not
provide enough in the way of customary structural elements (particularly a main
character to focus the story)” (qtd. in Palmer 18). The mainstream reviewers were
convinced that Kubrick ignored his talent because he did not, as afore-mentioned,
adjust to certain standards and “had proven either unable or unwilling to provide
the film with a causally linked plot leading to an exciting, last-minute conclusion”
(Palmer 19). Especially the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” sequence, which also
constitutes the end of the film, was met with disapproval and misinterpretation. In
this context, journalist Jeremy Bernstein wrote: “after reading the book, I realized
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that I really hadn’t ‘understood’ the film, and I had especially not understood the
ending” (qtd. in Nelson 106). Referring to the fierce criticism of establishment
critics, Joseph Gelmis was convinced that Kubrick’s movie was a film of “such
extraordinary originality that it upset the members of the critical establishment
because it exists outside their framework of apprehending and describing movies”
(qtd. in Agel 264).
Counterculture
The success of “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” with the young audience in general and the counterculture in particular “went far beyond the purview of what
might be properly called the aesthetic” (Palmer 14). While the “sweeping rejection
of those structures and themes so customary in the American commercial cinema
certainly challenged the analytical and critical acumen of journalists and reviewers
at the time” (Palmer 16), young film critics and moviegoers of an alternative culture praised exactly this rejection and the sequence soon became one of the key
manifestations of cultural opposition.
In other words, Stanley Kubrick’s dissociation of traditional Hollywood conventions and his unorthodox use of cinematic devices reflect the counterculture’s
ideas of rebellion against rationality. As mentioned above, the 1960s were a time
of political, social and cultural upheaval and youth revolt. The sequence quickly
caught on with the counterculture youth audience open to a contemplative viewing experience of a film, suggesting that the way to personal enlightenment was to
free one’s mind of the militaristic, reactionary and conservative status quo. In this
context, “it is easy to see how the non-rational and creative force in the final sequence of 2001 spoke to a younger generation fighting for change and attempting
to break away from institutional authorities that had brought them the futile war
in Vietnam” (Cornea 89). Stanley Kubrick “had something different to say, in the
largest sense of that term, and had found a different way to say it” (Palmer 16) and
therewith captured the right tone of the countercultural movement. Similar to
Kubrick and his unusual piece of art, young people across the country felt the
necessity to reject middle-class values and institutions. Thus the film and particularly “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” became “the source of a special knowledge
that distinguished them [young viewers] from their parents and ‘square’ adults in
general” (Palmer 14).
A further socio-political aspect that illustrates the counterculture’s positive reception of the final sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey is Kubrick’s deliberate
dodging of dichotomies. The traditional classification into good and bad was
avoided and it was left to the viewers to decide whether Bowman and his mission
were well intentioned or not. While in established Hollywood productions public
enemies, communists and oppositionists usually embodied the evil, Kubrick’s
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dissolution of dichotomies was received favourably by young Americans who
were tired of stylized enemy stereotypes.
Another aspect that explains the sequence’s popularity among young Americans feeling associated with the counterculture is the aforementioned possibility of
subjective interpretation. In an interview with Playboy, Kubrick states that: “I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience. … You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film”
(Nordern 47-48). Christine Cornea also recognizes this subjective potential of
interpretation, in particular in the Stargate sequence: “However, my own view is
that 2001 encouraged an active engagement on the part of the spectator, which is
perhaps most clearly evidenced in the confoundingly abstract imagery in the long
final sequence” (87).
Many young viewers derived from their personal interpretation of the happenings in “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” subjective messages. Yet, many of these
viewers interpreted Bowman’s speedy journey and his transformation into the Star
Child as a symbol for renewal and change. This common interpretation found an
echo in the counterculture’s attempts of reformation and transformation of the
American political, social and cultural life. Other young spectators transferred
their desire for freedom to the sequence and recognized in the rebirth the liberation from exterior influences and the possibility of broadening one’s mind. According to Barton R. Palmer, “[m]any reported undergoing religious conversions,
rather than experiencing altered states, during the film’s famous twenty-fourminute, dialogue-free final sequence” (14).
Yet not every interpretation of the sequence was optimistic. A common, more
critical interpretation was that the interaction between death and birth in the final
scene could “also be read as a symbol of recurrence” (Cornea 89) and quite a
number of young viewers deduced that this was a symbol of human conformism.
However, I would not attribute the appreciation of Kubrick’s technique to a single
message but rather generally to his rejection of dichotomies and the overall possibility for viewers to abstract an individual and subjective message from the film.
Conclusion
The popularity of the sequence “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey among young viewers can be traced back to different
reasons. Many young spectators certainly used the sequence and especially the
hallucinogenic light effects during Bowman’s rapid journey as a psychedelic experience and as an escape from reality. These experiences were often reinforced
by excessive drug-taking. However, it would be naive to attribute the Stargate
sequence’s success among young moviegoers to its use of mind-expanding effects
only. It is indeed much more. Stanley Kubrick produced an exceptional piece of
art that captured the tone of the U.S. counterculture and young viewers in general,
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who recognized themselves in the critical, subversive and provoking tone of the
movie. The counterculture that developed out of anger and frustration felt for the
conservative, racist and militaristic climate in the USA was addressed by Kubrick’s
non-conformist avoidance of established standards and conventions. Moreover,
the controversy about the final sequence of 2001 certainly can be seen as a reflection of the social circumstances of America in the 1960s. The success of Stanley
Kubrick’s legendary sequence can be explained with its double aspiration of entertainment and contemporary, intellectual statement. The sequence was like the
decade: provocative, colorful and rebellious.
Works Cited
Agel, Jerome, ed. The Making of Kubrick’s 2001. New York: Signet, 1974. Print.
Braunstein, Peter and Michael William Doyle. Image Nation: The American Counterculture
of the 1960s and ‘70s. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Cornea, Christine. “Spaced Out: Between the ‘Golden Years.’” Science Fiction Cinema:
Between Fantasy and Reality. Edinburgh: UP, 2007. 75-110. Print.
Chion, Michael. Kubrick’s Cinema Odyssey. London: BFI Publishing, 2001. Print.
Fernandez, Chino. “The Tet Offensive.” America in Revolt during the 1960s and 1970s.
Ed. Rodney P. Carlisle, and J. Geoffrey Golson. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
101-19. Print.
Mamber, Stephen. “Kubrick in Space.” Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New
Essays. Ed. Robert Kolker. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 55-68. Print.
Nelson, Thomas Allen. Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze. Bloomington: Indiana UP,
2000. Print.
Nordern, Eric. “Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrick.” Stanley Kubrick Interviews. Ed.
Gene D. Phillips. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 2001. 47-74. Print.
Palmer, Barton R. “2001: The Critical Reception and the Generation Gap.” Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays. Ed. Robert Kolker. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 13-27. Print.
Prono, Luca. “Free Speech Movement.” America in Revolt during the 1960s and 1970s.
Ed. Rodney P. Carlisle, and J. Geoffrey Golson. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
189-206. Print.
Trevino, Marcella Bush. “Kent State.” America in Revolt during the 1960s and 1970s. Ed.
Rodney P. Carlisle., and J. Geoffrey Golson. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
121-34. Print.
Manfred Alexander Müller
It Used to Be a Man’s World:
Manhood and Masculinity in Don Siegel’s
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
And so I ran. I ran, I ran, I ran! I ran as
little Jimmy Grimaldi ran the other day.
– Dr. Miles J. Bennell, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers features a rather peculiar ending. We witness a grown man running away in panic from an unseen young woman, eerily
mirroring a young boy running away from his mother in an earlier scene. The
movie offers a multitude of possible interpretations and several have been put
forward by different scholars over time. The predominant one, of course, has
always been to see the movie as an allegory for the communist threat prevalent in
the United States at the time the movie was released (Sanders 59). Fredric
Jameson even sees all Science Fiction films produced in the 1950s as influenced
by the Cold War:
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Arguably, the golden age of the fifties Science Fiction film, with its pod
people and brain-eating monsters, testified to a genuine collective paranoia,
that of the fantasies of the Cold War period. … The enemy within is then
paradoxically marked by non-difference: “communists” are people just like
us save for the emptiness of the eyes and a certain automatism which betrays the appropriation of their bodies by alien forces. (96)
But since the release of the movie more than 50 years have passed and since then
the focus of research has shifted dramatically and with it the possible interpretations of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Cut off from outside help, a young doctor and
his childhood sweetheart try to save their home town Santa Mira on their own.
The absence of external influence – with the focus of the plot on only one small
town – enables the viewer to learn about Santa Mira, its social structures and the
self-concept of its inhabitants. This paper will deal with the depiction of gender
within the movie, focusing especially on Dr. Miles Bennell’s rank in the social
hierarchy. It will either underline or deconstruct common stereotypes concerning
“typical” male behavior, but also take into consideration the depiction of Becky
Driscoll as the lead female character. In my analysis, I will focus on how the relationship between Miles Bennell and Becky Discroll develops in the course of the
movie, and on how the interaction between the two characters influences Bennell.
More generally, I want to suggest that the alien invasion depicted in Invasion of the
Body Snatchers can be seen as an allegory of the post-war decline of small-town
patriarchy and male social and political dominance in the United States. The
movie is critical of this development and warns of a possibly terrible outcome.
The analysis will take into consideration the historical background in which the
movie was produced and how changes in society have also brought about changes
in perception: the reaction of a contemporary audience to certain aspects of the
movie will most probably be quite different from that of a 1950s audience. Since
the movie was created in a society that was heavily influenced by the Cold War
and other aspects unique to the 1950s United States, it is likely that the aspects of
plot and production a contemporary observer regards as the most important ones
differ from the ones an observer from another time would choose and the ones
that the creators originally intended.
Santa Mira: An All-American Town?
In order to fully grasp the context in which the story takes place, one has to take
into consideration where it is set. Invasion of the Body Snatchers takes place almost
completely within the fictional town of Santa Mira, California. From what we can
see on screen, it does not seem to be a suburb, but rather an independent small
town, with a town center, stores and its own train station. It seems to be surrounded by hills and thus appears geographically isolated, which adds to the idea
Manhood and Masculinity in Invasion of the Body Snatchers
89
of autonomy. In his article “Picturing Paranoia: Interpreting Invasion of the Body
Snatchers,” Steven M. Sanders refers to this as “small-town insularity” (55). And
Santa Mira seems like an island, indeed, with almost the entire plot taking place
there. Additionally, Bennell’s attempts to call for outside help fail, adding to the
feeling of insularity.
The audience does not see what Santa Mira is like before the invasion starts
because at the time Bennell arrives, an unknown number of people have already
been replaced by the alien life forms. As the aliens are mimicking normal human
behavior, however, the viewer might still get a good impression of what the town
used to be like. According to Katrina Mann, the town’s population is characterized by “stable patriarchal management, a Protestant work ethic, and courtly love”
(50).
The way that both Dr. Bennell and Dr. Kauffman act, implies that this town is
firmly in the hand of men. There is a clear social hierarchy, which subordinates
women like Wilma and privileges men like Bennell and Kauffman. All the main
characters and most of the other people seen on screen are white. The streets are
clean, most people are friendly and seem content with their lives – or, this is at
least the impression the audience gets. Santa Mira appears to be almost too good
to be true – reminiscent of the fictional town of Seahaven in Peter Weir’s The
Truman Show. While Seahaven turns out to be a film set in a gigantic television
studio, Santa Mira is supposed to be real, although it is almost exactly as unrealistic. Invasion of the Body Snatchers glorifies the all-American small town, prosperous,
clean, and evoking a feeling of general happiness. The absence of poverty and
racial tensions as well as the traditional gender relations between the characters
paint the picture of a perfect community, not burdened by the real life problems
the United States faced in the 1950s.
This of course changes during the alien invasion: The town is still clean and
the population is still white; yet the people are unable to feel any emotions. Now
the general cleanliness appears to be as sterile as the alien life forms who do not
reproduce physically. The way Santa Mira is portrayed before the alien invasion
can be seen as an idealized small version of the United States itself. Thus, I would
argue that what happens in Santa Mira can and should be read as a comment on
issues which were contemporary at the time the movie was released.
The Gender Issue
In Invasion of the Body Snatchers we witness an alien invasion – not a military one, but
one relying on deception. The enemy has infiltrated the town of Santa Mira and
now lives among the town’s population, slowly taking power from within. The
prevalent interpretations have been linking the movie to either the Communist
threat or McCarthyism. What is more interesting, I would suggest, is how the
reaction to this threat is reflected in the depiction of gender.
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Although the movie ends in a slightly more optimistic way than it was originally intended, it is not a typical happy ending, more of an ambiguous one, in fact,
– and in any case the population of Santa Mira is lost for good. This is partly
caused by Bennell’s inability to cope with the situation in Santa Mira. In fact, the
situation gets out of control because Bennell lacks character traits that are generally considered as masculine, namely anger, determination, and aggression. Instead
he is hesitant, fearful and full of self-doubt. If we go back now to the historical
context in which the movie was made we can clearly see what message is conveyed here: The real United States, just like the fictional town of Santa Mira, is
threatened by an invasion from within. The formerly independent and strongwilled Becky – representing the new type of emancipated woman – is unable to do
anything against it and falters easily under the pressure of this threat. This is only
one aspect of the generally rather negative portrayal of women in Invasion of the
Body Snatchers. There are only very few instances in this movie in which women are
portrayed positively. Becky Driscoll, as the main female character, relies heavily on
Dr. Bennell to save her – and in the end is too weak to stay awake, enabling the
Pod People to replace her. Becky Driscoll, who at the beginning of the movie is
portrayed as confident and self-reliant, first becomes the damsel in distress and
then betrays the protagonist, Miles Bennell. As a result, in case of the Red Scare,
women can not be trusted to help in the defense against a communist Fifth Column. And even men may not be helpful, if they do not show stereotypically masculine behavior. The answer to this and indeed any threat to the United States must
thus be a masculine one. In order to defeat the enemy, one must be determined,
unyielding, strong and calm. The audience might remember from the last scene
that the doctors and police officers who find out about the invasion first from
Bennell himself and then via the truck accident are all men; men who then try to
rally men from the army and the FBI in order to fight the enemy. Thus, the
slightly more optimistic ending is a more optimistic one just because now the
defense lies in the hands of able men.
Miles Bennell: A Strong and Able Man?
In order to analyze how Miles Bennell is portrayed in the movie, one has to take a
closer look at his relationship with other people and their reactions to him. There
are several characters in Invasion of the Body Snatchers that show us quite clearly what
Bennell’s rank in the social hierarchy of Santa Mira is. In one of the very first
scenes of the film, Sally Withers, Bennell’s nurse, drives a car to the train station
to pick up the doctor. But as soon as they meet – and without even saying a word
about it – Bennell takes the driver’s seat. It may strike the contemporary viewer as
odd that a person who is picked up somewhere almost naturally takes the driver’s
seat from the person who has driven the car to the pick-up point. Driving here
appears to be some kind of a male prerogative. Another interesting factor in this
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scene is that the camera is placed on Bennell’s side of the car, which puts him in
the foreground of the shot. Sally is turned towards him and looks at him almost
adoringly while he jokingly talks about being able to break up her marriage if he
wanted to. His right to drive the car and thereby his control of the situation is
underlined, when in the next scene he jumps out of the car to run after a boy who
has run into the street in obvious distress. Sally slides over onto the driver’s seat,
moves the car a few feet forwards and then Bennell gets back in and drives on.
Thus, every time Sally is alone in the car she drives, but as soon as Bennell gets in,
he takes the wheel. This repeated procedure of exchanging control of the car quite
clearly shows what relationship the two have. Although Sally Withers and Bennell
have an employer-employee relationship, they are comfortable enough around
each other to engage in some banter. Nonetheless, it is always clear that Bennell is
the dominant one in their relationship.
The next and probably most important relationship that is portrayed is the one
between Bennell and Becky Driscoll. When they meet, they too engage in some
flirtatious banter. During the course of their conversation, it is revealed that they
have a history together and that Becky has recently been divorced. After Becky’s
divorce, she and Bennell had planned to meet in Reno for reasons unknown.
However, this meeting did not take place – ostensibly due to schedule difficulties
– and it is left unclear whether there is interest in a renewal of their relationship.
Apart from their spoken dialog, their body language gives us quite a good insight
into their relationship, for example, when they cross the street after leaving Bennell’s office. It seems like whenever the two of them are walking beside each
other, Bennell does not hold her hand, but places his own on her elbow, gently
steering her, thereby controlling the direction in which she walks. Even though
Becky Discroll’s clothing, demeanor, and flirtatious manner clearly set her apart
from Sally Withers (as does her past relationship with Bennell and the fact that she
is not one of his employees) he, once more, represents the dominant part in the
relationship.
It should be noted that nearly all the women Bennell encounters throughout
the movie are portrayed as assuming the inferior role: Sally Withers is his employee, Becky Driscoll is his former girlfriend who, recently divorced, has moved
back in with her father, and some other women are his patients. Towards many he
acts paternally, fulfilling his role as a small-town doctor, to some – as one would
expect from a handsome single doctor – he acts in a flirtatious manner. In several
scenes, this is also reinforced by the way in which the characters are positioned
during a conversation. In the doctor’s office and in the garden of the Lentz family
(Bennell makes a house call because Wilma Lentz is convinced that an impostor
has replaced her uncle), the women are seated while Bennell is standing. As a gentleman he leaves the seats to the women, of course, but this also enables him to
tower over them, which is why they have to look up to him while he, at certain
times almost condescendingly, talks down to them. One might argue that all these
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relationships are common for the 1950s, but the degree to which the gender disparity is exaggerated and later turned around still make them important for this
analysis.
The clear division along traditional gender lines can also be seen in the clothes
the characters wear. Bennell is mostly shown wearing a suit, which he is not afraid
to dirty, which can be seen when he gets out of the car on a dusty road and kneels
down beside the boy in the beginning of the movie. Becky Driscoll on the other
hand is usually wearing dresses and carrying fashion accessories like handbags or
shawls which hinder her movement. While Bennell’s hands are free to take action,
Becky Driscoll’s are clutching a purse.
When Bennell is called to a patient and takes Becky along with him, the way
she is dressed is contrasted with the way the female patient is. Wilma Lentz,
Becky’s cousin, has become suspicious of a close family member, who seems to be
acting strangely around her. Wilma’s clothes are quite plain and she does not sport
a particularly elaborate hairstyle either. Becky on the other hand appears almost
overdressed. Her styling very much underlines her femininity, making her even
more attractive than other women, which in turn reinforces Bennell’s masculinity.
The two of them therefore fulfill the stereotypical roles their respective genders
are generally associated with.
When the plot reaches its climax in the scenes where there is open hostility between the alien invaders and Bennell, the gender roles are still firmly traditional.
Bennell fears for Becky’s safety, and drives to her house to pick her up. Because
he is unable to awaken her, he simply carries her outside and to his car and takes
her to his house. The next morning, Bennell is again in the foreground of the shot
sitting on a table while in the background Becky is preparing his breakfast. Once
more, a very traditional, almost archaic gender relation is depicted in this scene.
Becky dutifully fulfilling her domestic role stands in stark contrast to Bennell’s
role as protector, having used his physical strength to carry her to safety the night
before. When the two of them have to hide in Bennell’s office for a night, it is
heavily implied that they engage in sexual intercourse (Mann 60). The ability to
seduce an attractive woman might serve as another reminder of how masculine,
confident and successful Miles is. The fact that Becky later tells Bennell that she
wants to be the mother of his children further strengthens the traditional gender
relationship. When the alien invaders abandon secrecy and start taking ever more
aggressive measures against the protagonists, Bennell and Becky have no choice
but to try to escape Santa Mira. In their escape, it is Bennell who keeps both of
them going. When Becky is physically exhausted from the strains of their flight,
the doctor first has to drag her along, and later even carries her away from the
town. Where he earlier was the dominant part of their relationship, he now is the
only active one. Their survival depends solely on him, while Becky, physically and
mentally exhausted, becomes utterly impassive.
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The Small-Town Doctor
Wilma Lentz is not the only character who is introduced as one of Bennell’s patients. In fact, the reason why he has returned early from his conference is that his
nurse, Sally Withers, has called him back in order to attend to the great number of
people who have come to seek his advice. We later learn that these people had
noticed strange behavior in their family members or peers. Yet at the time Bennell
returns to Santa Mira, most of them have either been convinced that nothing is
wrong or have been replaced by pod people. The few patients we see in Bennell’s
office seem to trust his opinion. It is also interesting to note that the change in
behavior many of the film’s characters seem to have noticed in others is not necessarily a medical problem – yet they still want to see Dr. Bennell about it, which
demonstrates that his authority and the trust the townspeople have in him are not
merely based on his status as medical doctor. It seems more like he is the one
person people may come to for advice in an unusual situation, which clearly distinguishes him as a authority figure within the small-town society of Santa Mira.
However, there are also other characters Bennell interacts with, for example
the psychologist Dr. Kauffman, whom he encounters when he is on a date with
Becky. They talk in an informal manner about the patients Bennell has seen and to
whom he refers to as a “mixed-up kid and a woman,” making clear that he does
not take their fears seriously. Kauffman reacts in the same indifferent manner,
blaming psychological difficulties for the strange behavior of Bennell’s patients.
This scene also marks an instance of male bonding: Bennell and Kauffman seem
to be old friends or at least old colleagues and talk about what to do about their
patients’ treatment out on the street in a very informal way. This symbolizes how
they are in control and how they can execute power without any sort of accountability. Katrina Mann points out that Dr. Kauffman represents the “dubious
postwar technocrat,” a member of the “white patriarchal collective” (59). His
friendship hints at Bennell’s status in the social hierarchy of Santa Mira. This social hierarchy seems to be based on patriarchal structures, with men like Bennell
and Kauffmann exercising power not only through their work but also through
their positions as well-respected members of the Santa Mira society.
Combining the observations concerning behavior, relationships and social hierarchy in Santa Mira, Bennell’s status in town becomes quite clear: He is portrayed as being very confident, especially around women. This can be seen in his
demeanor when talking to Becky, Wilma or Sally. The townspeople trust him and
come to him for medical and non-medical advice. Up until the very end of the
movie, he plays the active part when together with Becky. This reaches its climax
when he has to carry her into the tunnel in one of the last scenes. He sometimes
seems to be quite condescending, especially towards women, on one occasion
dismissing a woman’s (justified) fears the same way he dismissed the ramblings of
a hysterical child earlier in the movie.
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The Deconstruction of Masculinity
As I have shown so far, the picture of Dr. Miles Bennell as strong, confident and
in control of both his life and most of the situations he gets into is strengthened.
In the following section, I will explore to what extent this picture is deconstructed
during the course of the alien invasion and how this in turn affects possible interpretations of the movie.
This changing portrayal of Dr. Bennell does not come about suddenly but in
several steps. Some of them are rather subtle, some more obvious. One of the
first signs can be observed when Miles finds out that Sally has been replaced by an
alien. He watches from a window, then runs away in panic and jumps into his car.
Becky, who is in control of the car, then speeds away. This is the first instance in
the movie in which Bennell is in a car that he is not driving himself – thus, the
first situation in which a woman is in control while he is merely a passive passenger. A few scenes later, he and Becky are hiding in a closet in Bennell’s office,
while a policeman – already turned into a pod person – searches the place.
The fact that Bennell hides here and does not fight the policeman serves to
deconstruct the almost archaic former depiction of his masculinity. Later, he actually fights back – but he is subdued by the policeman and has to be saved by
Becky, who manages to tranquilize the alien policeman with an injection. Here,
Becky saves him, and the situation in which Miles saved Becky by carrying her out
of her house is in fact reversed. The fight with the policeman is also interesting on
the level of visual symbolism. The policeman, who has one of the most stereotypically male professions, of course carries a gun and a baton. Both are phallic
symbols, underlining his masculinity. He manages to overpower Bennell because
of his greater physical strength or determination, both attributes usually associated
with masculinity. Thus in order to lose the fight, Bennell must be less masculine
than the policeman, who in turn is defeated by a woman. This not only deconstructs traditional gender stereotypes, but also shows how Bennell is losing power
vis-à-vis the alien invaders and also vis-à-vis Becky Driscoll.
But in the end, it is Becky who delivers the coup de grâce. When Bennell leaves
her alone at their hiding place for a few minutes, she becomes a pod person. Bennell comes back, kisses her and realizes from her lack of reaction, probably caused
by a lack of emotions, that she has been replaced: “I didn’t know the real meaning
of fear,” Bennell can be heard in the voice-over, “until … until I kissed Becky.”
Michael Hardin here notes the image of the womb that the tunnel in which they
are hiding conveys (1). This imagery serves to put the already decreasingly masculine Miles in an environment strongly associated with the female.
Additionally, Miles notices Becky’s replacement only when she does not respond to his kiss. Here he fails to seduce her, which again stands in contrast to his
former success in doing so. In one of the earlier scenes we can also witness how
the former Sally, Bennell’s nurse, advises one of her fellow aliens where to place a
pod to replace her small child. This behavior shows how all the motherly instincts
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Sally might have had are gone. The inability or unwillingness to mate and the loss
of normal, protective behavior towards children further deconstructs the idea of
biological sex and traditional, sex-based gender roles.
After Bennell has realized that his companion has become a pod person, he
flees – and while he is running away we hear in a voice-over that he now is in
exactly the same situation the young boy Jimmy was in at the very beginning of
the movie. He now has become like the frightened child he refused to take serious
before. Hence there is a parallel where before there was a contrast. Earlier on,
Bennell was the one who calmed down those who panicked, mostly women, but
now he himself is extremely fearful and has basically suffered a nervous breakdown.
It should also be noted that, due to the pod people replacing more and more
people, he becomes increasingly isolated. In the beginning, he is an important part
of the town. He is friends with many of the film’s characters and many people
come to seek his advice. In the end however, has become an outcast. For someone who is used to be as involved in the community as Bennell, this must be quite
a difficult situation, one that adds to the pressure he faces and contributes to his
breakdown. Before, the traditional gender-specific attributes of both Bennell and
Becky had been strengthened. Now, however, they do not apply any more.
The depiction of Miles Bennell at the end of the movie differs greatly from the
way he is depicted in the beginning. While at first he is successful in his endeavors,
confident and in control, he later fails to save Becky as well as the population of
Santa Mira. Bennell panics and eventually has to leave it to others to notify the
authorities and fight the invasion. The fact that the movie systematically deconstructs the picture of a masculine Miles Bennell, together with its ambivalent ending, which does not clarify whether the humans will be able to fend off the invasion, will be the base for further interpretation.
Conclusion
At the end of the film, the once confident doctor becomes a scared child. The
idyllic small town in California becomes the base from which a hostile alien race
tries to invade the United States. What was once a romantic relationship turns into
horror and fear. What was once a loving mother now is a cold and calculating
alien who even plans to replace her own child. Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body
Snatchers succeeds in portraying an unrealistically perfect world just to systematically destroy it afterwards. To achieve this, the movie works on several levels: The
deconstruction of traditional gender roles leaves the protagonist a nervous wreck
and the town of Santa Mira populated by basically genderless individuals hostile to
the outside world. The destruction of the nearly perfect small town community of
Santa Mira transforms a once happy and presumably prosperous place into a
bridgehead of an alien invasion.
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I have already mentioned that the most prevalent interpretations of the movie
see the alien invasion as representative of either the danger of infiltration of the
United States by communist ideas or as criticism of McCarthyism. But we can go
one step further and look at how the doom of Santa Mira came about. We clearly
see a decline of male dominance in Santa Mira, since the Body Snatchers do not
seem to have any gender-based hierarchy (as can be seen, for example, in the
scene where Bennell’s nurse, Sally, orders several male aliens to place a pod near
her child). This can be seen as an analogy of the decline of patriarchy in the
United States as a whole, especially when taking into consideration the picture of
women as equal to men that was prevalent in communism. We can also see how
Bennell becomes a less and less masculine character as the story progresses. A
confident man in the beginning, he has now become childlike. In this context, the
movie is also critical of the empowerment of women, since as soon as there is an
emergency, women – here represented by Becky – have to rely on men to ensure
their safety. The movie thus serves as political and social commentary. While the
real United States are under threat from communist infiltration, measures were to
be taken to ensure that the traditional American social roles prevailed to ensure
that the American way of life survives. The fate that the population of the fictional
town of Santa Mira suffers must not be the fate of American society as a whole.
In order to ensure the safety of the American people, they have to behave differently than the people in Santa Mira. Men must take the initiative, because the
movie clearly shows that women are unable to do so. And these men must act in a
stereotypically masculine way, because if they do not, they will fail just as Miles
Bennell does.
The movie seems to call upon the male population of the United States to repeat their effort and to defeat the communist threat. And this, as the movie
shows, has to be done by making use of male virtues. The people of Santa Mira
did not do so, and were defeated and destroyed as a result. Invasion of the Body
Snatchers thus stands as a warning of a society that is not ruled by able men.
Films Cited
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Perf. Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.
1956. Walter Wanger Productions, 1998. DVD.
The Truman Show. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Jim Carrey and Laura Linney. Paramount
Pictures, 1998. DVD.
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Works Cited
Hardin, Michael. “Mapping Post-War Anxieties onto Space: Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders from Mars.” Enculturation 1.1 (Spring 1997): n. pag. Web. 16 Jul.
2009. <http://enculturation.gmu.edu/1_1/hardin.html>.
Jameson, Fredric. Signatures of the Visible. New York, NY: Routledge, 1990. Print.
Mann, Katrina. “You’re Next!: Postwar Hegemony Besieged in Invasion of the Body
Snatchers.” Cinema Journal 44.1 (Fall 2004): 49-68. Print.
Sanders, Steven M.. “Picturing Paranoia: Interpreting Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The
Philosophy of Science Fiction Films.” Ed. Steven M. Sanders. Lexington, KY: U of
Kentucky P, 2008. 55-72. Print.
Philipp Stückrath
“What keeps us safe also keeps us free”:
State Control vs. Personal Liberty
in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and
the Present-Day United States
In our present-day society we sometimes get the feeling that our personal liberty is
shrinking while the state control is increasing. In our everyday lives, we experience
that the state knows nearly everything about us. It seems that the state has access
not only to our personal data but also to our thoughts and opinions. This development may lead to the perception that governments of modern societies attempt
to investigate their own people in order to achieve more and more control over
them. The result is an increasing distrust and growing suspicion on the side of
both the state and the people.
Theories and doubts about these state politics culminate in academic essays
and scholarly articles on this subject as well in social criticisms laid down in novels, plays and movies. I would argue that movies have the potential to deliver the
strongest critical impact because they are products of modern mass media and are
often watched by several million people around the world. Scholarly articles either
deal with the problems of increasing state control or analyze the movies as cultural
products. In this chapter, I want to create a connection between these two ap-
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proaches in order to show the impact of state control in the present-day United
States, and to point out how it is reflected in the movie Minority Report by Steven
Spielberg (released in 2002 and based on a 1956 science fiction short-story by the
author Philip K. Dick). I will therefore compare the tools of state control in the
movie with a few examples of increasing state control in the United States, i.e. the
actions of the Department of Homeland Security and the new modification of the
law, the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001).
These concrete examples are taken from the time following the terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Center in 2001. Minority Report was filmed before 9/11 and
consequently this chapter does not mean to interpret the movie as a direct response to the increasing state control after the terrorist attacks. Instead I will be
more interested in analyzing Minority Report as a general social criticism of state
control. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the question whether increasing state control is a blessing or a curse, whether we as citizens should give up
more and more of our liberty and rights for increasing safety or if we should see
these actions of modern states in a more critical light.
State Control in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report
There are several types of state control in the movie Minority Report such as general
retina scanning and actions related to pre-emptive crime control. In the following,
I will explore the differences of the controlling methods, show how they work and
how they affect the freedom and privacy of every human character in the movie.
The experimental Pre-Crime system of Minority Report is a way to predict future
crimes. Washington, D.C.: In the year 2054, the so-called Pre-Cogs – a mentally
advanced form of human beings – dream of murders yet to come. These visions
are projected on a large screen visible for the Pre-Cops, a specialized department
of the Washington police. The Pre-Cops interpret the visions of the Pre-Cogs and
interfere and arrest the suspects before the predicted murder happens. In the
movie, not a single murder has occurred in three years. The people who are arrested are imprisoned without a trial or even a hearing and are kept in prison infinitely.
According to critics, the problem of Pre-Crime is that the actions of the government, which in the case of a predicted murder have a tremendous effect on the
lives of the suspects, are based on interpretations of the Pre-Cops. Lester D.
Friedman, for example, states that
… all mechanisms [of the Pre-Crime system], however sophisticated and
refined, remain open to human interpretation and, by virtue of that fact,
such devices are inherently susceptible to corruption and misuse.
State Control vs. Personal Liberty in Minority Report
101
This shows the inherent danger of the Pre-Crime system: Despite the fact that the
visions seem to be objective and real (which they are not, as is revealed at the end
of the movie), humans are still interpreting the visions of the Pre-Cogs and running the system. Therefore, Pre-Crime is subject to human fallibility. Who knows
whether the person who interprets a vision is objective or if personal experiences
shape his or her view? A good example for this is the protagonist of the movie,
Chief John Anderton, who works in the Pre-Crime unit because his son was kidnapped and possibly murdered some years earlier. In the words of Friedman “all
the variables which constitute one’s personal and social identity determine how,
and even what, one sees.”
Another flaw in the system is that the Pre-Crime system has lost its legitimation right from the beginning, because its founder Lamar Burgess committed
murder in order to establish the system – a murder which remained undetected
(Sutton 195). This means not only that the system can fail because of misinterpretations or ignored visions (so-called minority reports) as I have pointed out above,
but that the system itself is based on a murder. While Pre-Crime is used to catch
and imprison hundreds of people for future murders they will never commit, the
one establishing the system is a murderer still walking free.
In other words, the Pre-Crime system has too many possibilities of misuse and
fallibility. It is a system of an oppressive state used to control and suspect its own
people. Everybody can become the state’s target, even Anderton, one of the PreCops, who does not even know the person he is supposed to murder according to
the Pre-Cogs’ vision.
In Minority Report, the social environment is under permanent control by the
government, the police, and private corporations. The tool to control the people is
the retina scan. Everybody’s eyes are scanned everywhere: when entering a building as well as when using public transport or when shopping. Every person can be
identified and located wherever he or she is. These data are then used in various
ways. On the one hand, the companies use the knowledge of what one buys,
which shops one goes to, or which one’s daily routes are to create personalized
commercials. These commercials are not just adapted to the consumer’s profile
but they address the person directly. In my opinion, this is a sidekick to our present-day society. At the moment we are very concerned about what companies
know about us, if our data is safe, or how the companies gain the knowledge
about our needs to address us directly with their commercials. In the movie, nobody has any influence on how the personal data are raised or used. Every person
constantly makes it possible for the state or companies to retrieve personal data
simply by going outside the house and opening his or her eyes.
On the other hand, the data are used by the police to track people down. Especially for the Pre-Cops it is easy to find a suspect because the “omnipresent eye
scans make hiding virtually impossible” (Sutton 196). When a suspect leaves his
house he will sooner or later be scanned somewhere and the police will instantly
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know where to find him. To evade this, the main character in the movie, Chief
Anderton, has his eyeballs removed and exchanged for new ones, so that the police will not be able to catch him with the help of the retina scan system. Friedman
writes about this matter: “In the future [of Minority Report], the eyes are less the
window to the soul than the path to the check book – or to jail. Such intrusions
merely refine already existing devices now routinely used at airports and received
via email.”
Another area in which this dystopian vision of the state shows its controlling
power is the prison system. The suspects are caught with the Pre-Crime system
and the visions of the Pre-Cogs are evidence enough to imprison them. They are
taken to prison without a trial or even a hearing. The correctional facilities resemble a storehouse more than a prison. The prisoners are kept comatose, their vital
functions supervised by a computer. The punishment is infinite because the prisoners are not meant to be set free again. Geoff Bakewell calls this “the indefinite
warehousing of the prisoners” (97).
With the prisoner control the future state in Minority Report has achieved one of
its goals. The “technology creates a utopian state through the removal of unwanted elements … and crime, rather than through the fulfillment of a positive
ideal” (Atkinson 12). The unwanted elements, in this case “murderers” are removed from society and are imprisoned forever. The only reason why people
spend the rest of their lives in a Pre-Crime prison is the Pre-Cogs’ vision of a
future of which nobody knows if it would have come true. That means the state
simply imprisons people because they are likely to become criminals. This reflects
actions of a totalitarian state and serves as a warning that exaggerated state control
can lead to oppression and bondage as I will show later in the analysis of the state
control systems of our own society.
Nevertheless, the oppressive future state is not satisfied with controlling the
public sphere using retina scans. The police permanently infringe on the privacy
of the people in order to assert control and ensure public safety. In search of the
main character Anderton, for example, the Pre-Cops perform a thermal scan of a
building in order to see where exactly everybody in the building is. Afterwards
they send in spiders – little moving robotic creatures which can scan peoples’
retinas. The spiders are very intelligent robots, which can gain entry to every corner of the building. The devices break into the privacy of every human being in
the building, crawl on them and force them to let their retinas be scanned. Children, a couple making love and an old man sitting on the toilet – nobody can
escape the scans (Friedman). The spiders again reveal the characteristics of a totalitarian regime that ruthlessly infringes on the privacy of the people in order to
ensure the state’s ideas of public safety. In the name of the law – in this case to
catch a criminal – the privacy and liberty of innocent people is sacrificed.
The same happens when the police nearly detain Anderton on the street. The
policemen have jet-packs on their backs which allow them to fly after Anderton
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and even track him through apartments. According to Mann, the result is a “police
chase through family dinners and TV watching … that exposes the hidden in the
name of the law, while destroying the private, either by violence or by ridicule”
(199-200).
The examples above show the dimension of the state control in the fictional
world of Minority Report. The state controls its people in a very oppressive and
ruthless way and is willing in the name of law to sacrifice nearly every individual
freedom and the right to privacy and public safety. The people can do nothing
about it and therefore the audience gets the impression that in the movie the state
is a very authoritarian or even totalitarian one – a matter that I will discuss in detail at the end of this chapter.
State Control in Today’s Everyday Life
Today, newspapers and TV news are full of articles and debates about safety and
liberty. They often discuss the protection of our personal data and private sphere
from intrusion by the government. Especially the internet has a tremendous influence on our lives and makes it much more complicated to keep control over our
own data. Experts working for the police or intelligence agencies can reconstruct
the curriculum vitae of a person only by using the Internet. The spread of information about ourselves has also made it easier for companies to supervise our
consumer behavior and to drown us in personalized commercials. In all of these
areas one can find many parallels between the movie Minority Report and our own
society. To get a more precise image however, this chapter will only give examples
from the areas of public security and, more precisely, the measures taken by the
United States to enhance safety but also to confine privacy and personal liberty.
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 11 September, 2001 gave a
significant, thought-provoking impulse to the public security debate. The question
was raised whether citizens need to sacrifice more of their rights in the name of
public security to make it easier for the police and the intelligence agencies to
track down potential terrorists. During this time, the USA PATRIOT Act was
signed by President Bush and the Department of Homeland Security was
founded. Lester D. Friedman sees a coincidence in the release of the movie Minority Report and the security debate in the United States:
Though conceived, shot and edited long before the current crisis in domestic security spawned by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center
Towers, Minority Report hit movie screens at a time when questions about
how much personal liberty Americans were willing to sacrifice for the
promise of public security stimulated an ongoing national debate. Can we
trust the FBI and the CIA to exercise appropriate restraints, to monitor
only those who endanger our safety and not those who hold unpopular
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opinions, if given greater power to patrol our lives? Will President Bush’s
and Tom Ridge’s Department of Homeland Security prevent violent activities or routinely engage in unjustified surveillance of our personal lives? …
It is also a time when … prisons throughout the United States contain people arrested because the government suspects they would have committed
future crimes.
Because of this national security debate during the movie’s release, the following
section will deal with the new policies of the PATRIOT Act and the Department
of Homeland Security and how they pose a threat to the freedoms and liberties of
our personal lives.
According to John Podesta, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have started a “rapid
reconsideration of the legal restrictions placed on law enforcement and the intelligence communities” (3). The new USA PATRIOT Act was signed by President
George W. Bush and became operative on October 26, 2001. The PATRIOT Act
consists of ten chapters and is basically a law that makes the work of the police
and the intelligence agencies easier when hunting down suspected terrorists.
Sounding like a good thing to do at first, the new law has turned out to be a great
threat to the privacy rights of American citizens because, as Podesta has pointed
out, “when we decide, however, to expand surveillance powers to track terrorists,
all residents, not just the terrorists are affected” (3). The PATRIOT Act, despite
introducing many innovations, has especially reduced the restrictions concerning
surveillance. This affects in particular the so-called “Wiretapping,” “Pen Register,”
“Trap and Trace” and “Search Warrants” (Pallasky 221).
Wiretapping describes the eavesdropping of every form of telecommunications by the police or the intelligence agencies. This includes email, cell phones
and the conventional telephone network. Wiretapping is generally forbidden but
there can be exceptions for the tracking of criminals or terrorists. Due to the PATRIOT Act, getting permission for Wiretapping was made much easier (221-22).
Podesta states that “[i]t is conceivable that all the pay phones in an entire
neighborhood could be trapped if suspected terrorists happened to be in that
neighborhood” (4). This means that now nearly everybody can be targeted by
Wiretapping if there is only the slightest suspicion that the he or she could pose a
threat to national security (Pallasky 221-22).
Pen Register and Trap and Trace describe the tracking of dialed numbers and
the ensuing localization of the called phone. This possibility to track people was
already there before the PATRIOT Act, but it was restricted to the conventional
telephone network. Now, also cell phones, the access to internet sites, and emails
can be tracked (222-23).
Search Warrants are permissions a judge or a court give to the police so that
they can search private apartments or houses. Before the PATRIOT Act this was
one of the last possibilities of the agencies to captivate a suspected criminal. Now,
the permissions for a Search Warrant are much easier to obtain and there is even
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an addition to the old law. The so-called “Sneak and Peek Search Warrant” allows
the agencies to search a house (and even seize items from the owner), and then
leave without informing the owner that his/her house has been searched (223-24).
Especially this last modification of the law due to the PATRIOT Act shows
how dramatically the privacy and the personal rights of every American are restricted. Now, the police or members of the intelligence agencies can tap telephone calls or emails, then track the person called and eventually search the house
while the owner is away and without even informing him. Nobody knows if the
gathered information about the suspected person is deleted when the government
stops the investigations. Podesta points out possibilities of misuse:
[T]he government can learn a tremendous amount of information about
you from where you shop to what you read to who your friends are
through the use of so-called transactional records. The potential for abuse,
for invasion of privacy, and for profiling citizens is high. (3)
This high potential for abuse is also visible in the adaptation of the PATRIOT Act
by other countries. Beth Elise Whitaker states that “[i]n some countries the adaptation of anti-terrorism laws has provided leaders with the tools they need to silence critics and punish political opponents” (1017). She further found out that
“the more authoritarian a country, the more quickly it enacts anti-terrorism legislation” (1021) because it turned out to be a perfect tool to encounter unwanted
thoughts or ideas in a country. This way, she continues, “leaders in China, Egypt,
Eritrea, Malaysia, Russia and Syria, among others, have justified recent crackdowns on political opponents as a necessary response to terrorist threats” (1028).
In Zimbabwe, even journalists who merely wrote about political violence were
labeled as terrorists (1028). This shows the abusive potential of new anti-terrorism
laws like the PATRIOT Act. Authoritarian countries immediately seize the opportunity to establish such laws because they see the potential of the new laws to be
used in domestic politics. They are an invitation for the police and the intelligence
agencies to establish a system of repression and control over the citizens. This can
pose a great threat to democracy and has to be watched very closely, especially by
privacy activists and NGOs.
Another institution founded in the wake of 9/11 that can possibly be abused
by the government to manipulate and control its own people is the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). The department was created in the year 2002 and can
be seen as a direct consequence of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The new department was established as a combination of 22 agencies, which had operated separately before, and employs a total 179,000 people (Krauss 57). The intended function of this massive department was to gather experts from many different
agencies at one location in order to make it easier to defend America from terrorist attacks. However, even during the creation of the new ministry, critics like
Elishia L. Krauss asked “why do we feel that we need to create an enormous bu-
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reaucracy to meet our homeland security needs?” (57). As a matter of fact, the
complexity of the DHS tasks is immense: it has to monitor “5.7 million cargo
containers and 600 million passengers on American aircraft every year” as well as
to patrol “95,000 miles of coastline and 430 major airports” (57). Additionally, the
department is now in charge of the preparation for and the prevention of terrorist
attacks (57).
Krauss has also pointed out that the benefit of creating large bureaucratic
agencies like the DHS is not really in making the country a safer place but in making the people think it is a safer place:
It seems the federal government has been spending more energy trying to
make Americans feel safe by building up a bureaucratic organization for the
future, rather than actually making America a safer place to live now. Establishing the agency itself creates a false sense of safety. There is a perception
that something is being done and that America is more secure. (57-8)
According to Krauss and other critics, departments of the size of the DHS are
highly inefficient and slow, and their only function is to calm the masses. Thus the
DHS can be seen as a tool of state control over the people. The DHS even uses
the so-called Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) to execute greater control. The HSAS is a color-coded alert system, based on the U.S. military’s Defense
Condition System, which is supposed to show America’s protection from terrorist
attacks (Shapiro/Cohen 127). There are five threat levels: low (green), guarded
(blue), elevated (yellow), high (orange) and severe (red), which serve to predict the
possibility and gravity of an attack (123). Yet, how these levels are set by the DHS
remains unclear because there is no information as to what is required to raise the
level to a certain color (124). Moreover, the descriptions of the threat conditions
are misleading because everybody can interpret “low,” “high” or “severe” differently (128).
There are several hints that the HSAS is used by the government in a manipulative way. In the years from 2002 to 2007, for example, the threat level never
went below yellow, and was raised to orange eight times, even though none of
these “high risks” was followed by a terrorist attack (126). Another action that
caused distrust in the system occurred in the year 2003. Jacob N. Shapiro and
Dara Kay Cohen state:
With the United States on the brink of war with Iraq in February 2003, the
George W. Bush administration chose to reduce the threat level from orange to yellow so that it could raise the threat level once the war began. The
decision was intended to avoid having to go to red alert. (128)
Although critics have pointed out that the system was used as a tool for domestic policy by President Bush, a rise of the threat level bound the media’s attention to the possibility of a terrorist attack and during the election period the Presi-
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dent’s approval ratings increased significantly following warnings about terrorism
(130). It is not hard to see the possibilities of misuse of the HSAS by the government and the DHS. It can be used to control the media and to control the people
by toying with their fears of a terrorist attack. These possibilities of political misuse have eventually led to a deep distrust in the American population and the
system’s complete marginalization (121-22).
In the next part of this chapter, I will compare my examples of state control in
the United States with the techniques shown in the movie Minority Report. In my
analysis, I will focus on similarities and differences and raise the question whether
Minority Report can and should be read as a social critique.
Minority Report: Social Criticism?
The movie Minority Report reflects on many aspects of our present-day society. In
the movie, the eyes give access to personal data and there is nothing that can be
done except exchanging one’s eyeballs for new ones. In our society, the Internet is
our eye to the world and this eye is scanned, too. We also have little influence on
what happens to our data. The companies profile us, overflow us with personalized commercials and if we do not buy anything, they sell our dataset to another
enterprise. Though our retinas are not scanned yet, we have no influence on who
knows what about us and how this knowledge is used.
Furthermore, the PATRIOT Act with its “wiretapping” and “sneak and peek”
tactics is already present in Minority Report. The government profiles citizens and
targets everybody in the name of anti-terrorist legislation. In the movie, nobody
has insight into which knowledge is collected about him via retina scanning or the
visions of the Pre-Cogs, but neither do we have insight into the records kept by
the government – possibly for years. The government in Minority Report uses the
people’s fear of murder and crime to establish the Pre-Crime system – a system
that, as I have argued earlier, is highly authoritarian and has many possibilities of
misuse. It even made the people to accept an inhuman prison system like the PreCrime prisons. The state is successful in creating a utopia, i.e. a state without
crime, by removing the unwanted elements, namely the criminals (Atkinson 12). I
would suggest that the same is happening in our own society: American prisons
contain people of whom the government thinks that they are likely to commit
future crimes (Friedman). Furthermore, laws like the PATRIOT Act have the
potential to eliminate unwanted elements – i.e. critics, dissidents or people leading
an unpopular lifestyle. This can be observed in authoritarian countries where the
law has been rapidly adopted. Like the police chase and the spiders in the movie,
our own society knows hardly any privacy anymore. Everybody becomes transparent before the law – through data, registers, and telecommunications. Even
houses can be searched, properties be seized, and the owner is likely to not even
notice it.
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Philipp Stückrath
Institutions like the Department of Homeland Security and its tool the Homeland Security Advisory System are foreshadowed in Minority Report in the form of
the Pre-Crime system. The DHS gives the people the feeling that the government
is active. The HSAS is used by the government as a tool of domestic policy that
toys with the citizens’ fear of terrorism and sidetracks the attention of the mass
media. The same “false sense of safety” (Krauss 58) is created in the movie Minority Report by the Pre-Crime system. The people think the visions of the Pre-Cogs
are infallible not knowing that there can be “minority reports” and that especially
the Pre-Cops are likely to miss something, so that there is still the possibility of
murder.
Considering the tremendous similarities between the world presented in Minority Report and the present, I think that the movie is meant as a social criticism.
Minority Report is not set far in the future and therefore facilitates seeing parallels to
our present-day society. The movie shows us what can happen if we do not question the ambitions of the governments to gain a greater control over our lives and
to see through tactics of the state or the mass media, which are often trying to
persuade us to give up parts of our freedoms and our privacy for a greater public
security. Private choice does always contain the possibility of making the wrong
choice – to choose wrongly does not mean that we have to eliminate the choice at
all (Mann 201).
Minority Report, then, is a social criticism and a warning for us that “uncritically
trusting in any system whatsoever inevitably leads to disastrous consequences”
(Friedman). According to Friedman, the movie encourages us to question actions
of our governments which confine our liberties because scepticism is the only
safeguard that we have against human frailty and desire. Minority Report exemplifies
this by showing that doctrinaire conviction in a system creates oppression and not
freedom. Or, as Lester D. Friedman aptly puts it:
[T]he surrender of our liberties in a quest for security is seen as far too high
a price to pay. Ultimately, then, Minority Report warns us that, even during
times of wide-spread public anxiety [like our current fear of terrorism], the
motto of the Pre-Crime unit – ‘That Which Keeps Us Safe Also Keeps Us
Free’ – must be reversed: that which keeps us free also keeps us safe.
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Works Cited
Atkinson, Paul. “The Visualization of Utopia in Recent Science Fiction Film.” Colloquy: Text Theory Critique 14 (2007): 5-20. Print.
Bakewell, Geoff. “The One-Eyed Man Is King: Oedipal Vision in Minority Report.”
Arethusa 41.1 (2008): 95-112. Print.
Friedman, Lester D. “Minority Report: A Dystopic Vision.” Senses of Cinema 27 (Jul.-Aug.
2003): n. pag. Web. 19 Mar. 2009. <http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents
/03/27/minority_report.html>
Krauss, Elishia L. “What the Department of Homeland Security Won’t Do.” The
Public Manager 32.1 (2003): 57-58. Print.
Mann, Karen B. “Lost Boys and Girls in Spielberg’s Minority Report.” Journal of Narrative
Theory 35.2 (2005): 196-217. Print.
Minority Report. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton. 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks, 2002. DVD.
Pallasky, Angsar. “USA PATRIOT Act: Neues Recht der TK-Überwachung.” Datenschutz und Datensicherheit Vol. 26, No. 4 (2002): 221-25. Print.
Podesta, John. “USA Patriot Act: The Good, the Bad, and the Sunset.” Human Rights
Magazine 29.3 (2002): 3-7. Web. 22 Sep. 2009. <http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/
winter02/podesta.html>
Shapiro, Jacob N. and Dara Kay Cohen. “Color Bind: Lessons from the Failed
Homeland Security Advisory System.” International Security 32.2 (2007): 121-54.
Print.
Sutton, Brian. “Sophocles’s Oedipus the King and Spielberg’s Minority Report.” The
Explicicator 63.4 (2005): 194-97. Print.
Whitaker, Beth Elise. “Exporting the Patriot Act? Democracy and the ‘war on terror’
in the Third World.” Third World Quaterly 28.5 (2007): 1017-32. Print.
Moritz Emmelmann
Religion in Soylent Green
Based on Harry Harrison’s dystopian novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966), Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green (1973) is set in New York in the year 2022. As police
officer Robert Thorn and his roommate Solomon (Sol) Roth investigate the assassination of William R. Simonson, an executive of the world’s largest food corporation “Soylent,” they gradually unveil a much larger criminal plot. Although Thorn
fails to retain information from a priest to whom Simonson had confessed shortly
before his death, Sol acquires classified information revealing that the widely consumed food surrogate Soylent Green is made from dead people. Sol reacts to this
revelation by ending his life in a semi-religious euthanasia facility, while Thorn
decides to continue his investigations. He follows a corpse transport, finds proof
for his theory and, badly wounded by contract killer Tab Fielding, manages to
inform his chief officer of the scandal at the end of the film.
The living conditions in the world of Soylent Green are characterized by massive
overpopulation, environmental destruction and extensive crime. The fictional
New York of 2022 is chronically underserved with respect to food, housing, sanitation and electricity. Its inhabitants have to face corruption, police brutality and
the unrivalled monopoly of the Soylent Corporation that fixes prices and produces
food from its deceased customers. These outrageous circumstances are a call to
arms for helpers of the “poor and orphaned” (Psalms 10, 14). When learning that
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the food substitute Soylent Green is made from the dead, the Christian Church,
with the priest as its representative, becomes involved in the film’s central conflict.
This dramatic situation provides a test case for the church’s charitable and moral
ambitions. The conduct within the ambit of the church, which extends to the
church building and its members, differs starkly from the procedures in the outside world, which is controlled by the government and the Soylent Corporation.
In fact, it creates the impression of a religious sphere with an inside that acts as a
sanctuary opposing the moral decay in the society shown in the film. By these
means, the film draws attention towards the depiction of religion and especially of
the Christian Church.
Few works have been published on Robert Fleischer’s 1973 film Soylent Green
and none of them have discussed the topic of religion in great detail. When the
film receives scholarly attention – usually in the context of more encompassing
studies on science fiction film – religion is typically featured as one component
among many. Furthermore, analyses of Soylent Green vary considerably: They provide a number of conclusive readings, yet generally neglect to consider the film as
a piece of art in its own right. In Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film,
Vivian Sobchack, for example, has provided a short discussion of the filmic devices in Soylent Green in which she focuses solely on how the dystopian film communicates the people’s alienation from nature and their dehumanization (131-32).
The film’s final revelation that “Soylent Green … is … PEOPLE!,” on the other
hand, serves as the title and guiding metaphor of Ronnie D. Lipschutz’s article on
“Labour, Bodies and Capital in the Global Political Economy.” In his assessment
of our present-day economy, Lipschutz links fact and fiction by arguing that the
horrible cycle Soylent Green envisions for future food production and consumption
can already be detected on today’s labor markets where the laboring body is constantly consumed and recreated (573-76). Finally, Pat Bereton briefly reviews the
film as one example of her larger survey on the theme of ecology in the American
cinema, and points out an exceptional explicitness of both the film’s environmental dystopia and a utopian alternative of pastoral harmony. She aptly calls the
latter a vision of “(post)secular spiritualism” and mentions in a footnote that main
actor Charlton Heston appeared repeatedly in stories of biblical or spiritual content (169-70). The widespread neglect of instances of religion, then, is all the more
surprising as religious elements, characters and institutions occupy central positions in the film and together provide much material for interpretation. Numerous
interrelations created through means of plot development, symbolism and contrast form a thoroughly crafted discourse that deserves consideration in the
evaluation of the film.
In this chapter, I will show that in the context of an extreme social, economic
and moral crisis, Soylent Green presents the Christian Church as a charitable institution offering both spiritual leadership and moral integrity. Regardless of its limited
factual capacities, hope for positive change centers on the efforts and services of
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the church. Certainly, my background as a student of theology helped me to develop interest in this specific aspect. Nevertheless, this chapter is not meant as a
theological review of the film, but as a film analysis that focuses on the religious
elements in Soylent Green.1
Instances of Religion
The fictional world of Soylent Green is not dominated by religion, not ruled by religious leaders and not characterized by spirituality. And yet, a number of peculiar
incidents, comments and character relationships draw attention to its religious
dimension, adding a number of subtle yet dramatic linkages between the morally
corroded reality of Soylent Green and religious practices and traditions. The religions featured in the film are Judaism and the Roman Catholic denomination of
Christianity. Even though the society portrayed appears to be very multicultural,
there are no instances of other world religions. However, we do find an important
third party to the spiritual world of Soylent Green: a fictional, semi-religious death
cult that is located around euthanasia facilities maintained by the ever-present
Soylent Corporation. This cult incorporates certain elements of both Judaism and
Christianity within a heathenish ritual, but it never abandons its central theme and
purpose of assisting in suicide.
I will now turn to a more detailed analysis of those instances in the film in
which religions play a role. With this, I seek firstly to gain access to the religious
discourse in the film and secondly to evaluate the religions’ respective functions.
Judaism
The representative of Judaism in Soylent Green is the old man Solomon Roth. His
affiliation to the Jewish religion first becomes clear shortly before the dinner
scene, when he says the Hebrew toast “Le Chaim” before drinking the whiskey
that his friend Robert Thorn has brought home. Also, his first name is not an
unusual one for a man with Jewish ancestors. In the biblical tradition, Solomon is
the name of one of the great kings of Israel. His regency is said to have been a
time of peace and prosperity as well as political stability. Under his successor, the
unity of the twelve tribes was lost and the faith in Jahveh deteriorated (2 Chronicles
9 18-27; 12). Solomon Roth makes no specific comments about his religious beliefs and does not appear to practice his religion in terms of prayer, service attendance or study of the scripture. He frequently makes exclamations like “Oh God”
1
This paper was written in the context of a seminar titled “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks”
at the University of Göttingen in the summer term of 2009, held by Kathleen Loock. Its content, structure and mode of argumentation have been both developed and criticized throughout
the course and therefore owe credit to the participants of the course and the teaching staff.
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Moritz Emmelmann
and at one point tells Thorn to “go with God,” which seems to be a habit or a
tradition rather than a calling upon God or a blessing. In this context, it is very
remarkable how he comes to undergo the death ritual of the euthanasia cult. As he
once more exclaims “Oh God” upon the shocking discovery that Soylent Green is
made from the dead, the head of the information exchange takes him by his word
and eerily poses the question: “What God, Mr. Roth? Where will we find him?” In
the face of his devastating knowledge, this question becomes relevant to Solomon
and he answers: “Perhaps at home. Yes, at home.” The expression “at home”
refers to voluntary execution in a euthanasia facility and indicates that Roth is able
to project his personal spirituality onto the ritual of the euthanasia cult, although
the latter does not relate itself to the Jewish God in any way. Rather the cult serves
as the projection surface for individual religious longings. This becomes clear in
the scene following Roth’s resolution to go home, in which we see him walking
through a dark and empty street towards the brightly illuminated euthanasia facility. Its basic features of light, warmth and cleanliness as well as the video show of
nature scenes, impressive lighting and music during the dying ceremony allow
people to have a spiritual experience regardless of their actual religious background. In Solomon’s case this apparently bridges the discrepancy between the
ritual and the Jewish law forbidding murder and suicide.
As Roth is the only representative of the Jewish religion in the film, it is licit to
draw conclusions from his attitude towards Judaism about the film’s portrayal of it
in general. The religion’s chief function here is to serve as a hoard of tradition and
as a connector to a better past. Therefore, the film does not portray Jewish practices or sacred buildings, but instead associates it with books, knowledge and narration. For example, Solomon himself is referred to as “the book” because of his
job as police assistant and the center of his professional life is the “exchange” that
resides in the public library. Roth’s first name relates to a grand past and so do the
stories he tells Thorn of a better time before the age of Soylent. In a very literal
sense, Judaism is portrayed in the film as a religion of the book, which corresponds with its focus on religious documents and the command to pass on
knowledge as given in the Jewish creed “Shema Yisrael” (Deuteronomy 6, 4-9).
Christianity
In Soylent Green, instances of Christianity are present in the form of utterances,
characters, rituals and specific localities. Such connections are remarkably numerous and call for a serious consideration of the religion’s role and function in the
film.
The church building is one example of the church’s involvement in the conflict over secrecy or publication of the fact that Soylent Green is made from
corpses. It is host to a number of scenes including parts of the investigation and
the final battle between hero Robert Thorn and his antagonist Tab Fielding. This
115
repeated use of the building as a setting may be read to indicate an understanding
of the church as a relevant factor in moral issues. The church’s counterpart is a
euthanasia facility, which forms the religious center of the euthanasia cult and
therefore may also be described as a temple. However, their purposes are altogether different: The church provides housing and some medical care – the facility
is the site of mass homicide. It is also noteworthy that the film shows no Jewish
synagogue and gives no explanation for this gap. In my opinion, speculations on
this topic have no basis in fact and run the risk of inappropriately transferring
historic events to a work of fiction.
Another instance of Christianity is the church personnel, represented by an
African American priest named Paul. The very engagé clergyman heads the church’s
charitable activities and becomes intertwined with Thorn’s investigation when the
Soylent Green manager William Simonson confesses that his company’s products
are not harvested from the ocean as the public is told, but in truth are made from
the dead. With the priest gaining the same knowledge as Simonson – and later on
Solomon and Thorn – the church joins the small group of people who know the
secret of Soylent Green. Because of this entanglement via its very own practice of
confession, the church is forced to react. Upon learning about the production of
Soylent food, the church neither takes the initiative like Thorn, nor is it forced
into resignation like Solomon. The church’s resolution is to continue its service to
the poor and sick, although it is questionable whether the priest will be able to
fulfill his duties effectively in the future. This reaction is bound to be compared
with that of other characters as the viewer’s attention turns towards the moral
assessment of different ways of dealing with the most appalling truth: that, in the
words of Robert Thorn, “Soylent Green is people.”
Christian rites and traditions are also present with some of the minor characters, hinting at some awareness of a Christian heritage in the society of Soylent
Green. Simonson, apprehending his near assassination, confesses to the priest.
Simonson’s former concubine later expresses her regret at the lack of a traditional
funeral for him, which indicates that she is still familiar with the religious dimension death used to have in former times. Furthermore, the homeless masses sheltered within the church make frequent use of the offer of confession. This sign of
religious earnestness is probably caused by the danger of death that is present
throughout the film and might occur at any time due to disease, malnutrition or
the violent environment. These examples show a strong association of the church
with rites and ceremonial actions as well as a general understanding of the church
as something not quite obsolete but rather traditional. At the same time, the use of
the church building as setting for important scenes denotes its significance for the
events.
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Moritz Emmelmann
Euthanasia Cult
A third religious element in the film is a death cult involving the euthanasia of
people seeking to escape life in the world of Soylent Green. In a ceremony reminiscent of heathenish rituals, these people are placed on a stretcher, given a toxic
drink and then granted a video show of nature scenes accompanied by music and
special lighting. This procedure results in the death of the person, after which the
corpse is quickly removed from the ceremonial room and then brought to factory
grounds to be processed into Soylent Green.
On a spiritual level, this cult centers around the notion of “going home,”
meaning the act of voluntary execution. While there is no further theological or
esoteric foundation to this idea in the film, the existence of a place called “home”
seems to be a common thought. No certain destination or spiritual goal is announced in order to promote “going home.” The devastating living conditions
evidently are enough to create escapist longings in vast parts of the general public.
Strikingly, the conditions of the procedure – no pain, a twenty-minute video show
with shots of nature scenes and a choice of music – are widely known and hardly
need to be mentioned again in the facility itself. Because no applicant for “going
home” lives to tell others about the ritual, it can be reasoned that there must be
some form of advertising to inform people about the procedure. Solomon Roth’s
comment “I should have gone home long ago” may be read to imply that suicide
had already been suggested to him earlier, maybe at a certain age or with the decline of his working power.
The “priests” of this cult are employees dressed in long white gowns who act
with great dignity and thereby create the impression of actual religious procedures
taking place. They are the most important factor in making euthanasia appear as
something religious and represent the facilities to the public. This lets me conclude that the creators of the cult – probably executives of the Soylent Corporation or of the government – seek to quench the religious thirst of people with
these ceremonies. Since they are the representatives of this governmental institution for the public, it is reasonable to conclude that the society leaders in Soylent
Green seek to quench the religious thirst of people with these ceremonies. Should
there really be other motives besides economic interest for maintaining the facilities, this would point at a competition between the religions. However, I believe
my earlier observation that the cult acts as a projection surface for individual religious feelings points away from a direct competition and towards a function as an
outlet for spiritual wants. Instead of proposing a certain belief system of its own,
the euthanasia cult lends itself to a diverse set of religious ideas. As the operators
of the cult are the only authority with the power to grant people to “go home,”
they are in control of yet another instrument of power. Since their work directly
assists the production of Soylent, we can assume they belong to the Soylent Corporation and receive payment and supplies from corporate funds. Nevertheless,
they certainly do not know what becomes of the dead bodies. The Soylent facto-
117
ries are heavily guarded and even the drivers of the garbage trucks are exchanged
at the gates. Because, as Robert Thorn tells us, work on the so-called waste disposal plants is a sentence for life, no word of the conversion of corpses into food
reaches the outside world.
Throughout the film, we see that power resides with those who have work and
who can thus afford access to resources like room, food and other basic commodities. The poor are generally treated cruelly and contemptuously as illustrated
by the practice of “scooping” them into trucks to end riots. Power is frequently
accompanied by corruption and nepotism, for example in the police department
or within the board of the Soylent Corporation.
The buildings that house the euthanasia cult are very modern, clean and spacious and are open to the public. In stark contrast to the general treatment of
people by the government and the Soylent Corporation, officials here are very
friendly and courteous. This certainly helps to attract new victims, but it also
sheds light on a hypocritical and sinister attitude towards people. The sequence of
scenes displaying Solomon’s death in the euthanasia facility reveals how, instead of
bringing salvation, the ceremony plays a fatal trick on the poor. Most obviously,
the ceremonial rooms are called “theaters,” indicating that the ritual is understood
as an enactment. During the video show, the buoyant music takes away the gravity
of the moment and the intense orange light lends Solomon a healthy complexion.
However, before the last note has faded away, the lighting abruptly changes back
to standard and an extreme close-up forces the viewer to look at Solomon’s dead
face in all its bluntness. This shows that the warmth and dignity of this scene is a
masquerade disguising the cruelty of the procedure. As far as can be judged from
the information given in the film, the euthanasia cult is very popular and attracts
people from various religious backgrounds.
The Depiction of the Christian Church
As I have shown, the three groups in the religious world of Soylent Green have
differing human and institutional representatives and unequal levels of popularity.
The fictional euthanasia cult deserved special attention in the description above
and, a corporate or governmental institution is assumedly the largest religious unit
among the three. Nevertheless, I believe the Christian Church serves an even
more complex function in the film’s moral discourse. I will therefore proceed to
further examine and interpret its depiction in the film, bearing in mind the context
of a social, economic and moral crisis. My argument is that the Christian Church
acts as the lone practitioner of long abandoned virtues such as altruism and magnanimity and provides helpful, if not vital services under the hostile circumstances.
The evidence for this outstanding position among the institutions and characters
can be grouped into three central functions fulfilled by church and clergymen:
charitable actions, spiritual leadership and defense of morality.
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Charity
Given the city’s massive overcrowding and lack of food supply, the necessity of
help is obvious. This causes the church in Fleischer’s Soylent Green to react in a
very direct way. The church building itself becomes a refuge for masses of homeless, poor and sick people. In various scenes the viewer can observe the altruistic
work of a number of nuns and the priest. They nurse the sick, set up and repair
beds and continue to accommodate newly arrived people seeking help. At one
point, Thorn finds an orphaned child and quite naturally takes it to the church for
care. Apparently it is known to offer reliable support for those in danger.
A further characteristic of the church in this context is its lack of security devices and guards. The doors are unlocked, open to anyone wishing to enter, as
there are no contracts to be negotiated and no payments to be made. This forms a
sharp contrast to other scenes, in which we see for example the house entrance of
Robert Thorn guarded by an armed watchman, who sends away people longing to
sleep on the already crowded staircase. Such details underline the importance of
charitable action and draw attention to the difference in attitude between the general public and the church. While accessibility is also a characteristic of the euthanasia facilities, these require an application and are of course interested in profiting from their clients rather than serving them. When Robert Thorn first visits the
church to speak with the priest, he steps into a crowded, messy room with clouds
of haze drifting through the air. By contrast, the euthanasia facilities are particularly spacious, clean and have a pleasant odor, which causes Solomon Roth to take
a deep breath when stepping inside. All of this exemplifies that the material offers
of the cult surpass those of the church by far. However, one must keep in mind
that the church’s offering is life sustaining while the cult’s is life destroying.
Furthermore, the priest Paul is presented as a highly engagé, even altruistic laborer – working until mental and physical exhaustion. The knowledge of the true
ingredients of Soylent Green, in his own words, “is killing” him and it truly does
when Tab Fielding sneaks into the confessional to shoot him. This illustrates how
the priest dedicates his work, health and his life to the cause of charity. The actions of both church and clergy appear as positive, commendable examples of
reacting to the dramatic social circumstances. It must be acknowledged, however,
that regardless of the considerable efforts described above, the church is not capable of vanquishing the social hardship of the Soylent Green society in its entirety.
This is illustrated on a filmic level by the weariness of the priest, which intensifies
to a near paralysis after he finds out the truth about Soylent Green. Also the small
number of church workers in relation to the millions of homeless and unemployed people allows no other conclusion than a failure of the church to effect
extensive change. But at the same time, the church’s actions are singular in the
world of Soylent Green. Nowhere else do the poor encounter genuine compassion,
ingenuous amicability and unconditional readiness to help. As we can also see
from the portrayal of Robert Thorn’s investigations, the film is more interested in
119
effort, commitment and perseverance than in the factual results of the struggle
against injustice and immorality. Thus, the value of the church’s actions and its
moral integrity is not diminished by the irrefutable incapacity to overcome the
unrighteousness present in the Soylent Green society.
Spiritual Leadership
But the agent of Christianity does not exhaust itself with practical help alone. The
Roman Catholic Church in Soylent Green also takes the role of spiritual leadership
for its members and guests, which is made most explicit by the administering of
Catholic sacraments.
The sacrament of confession initiates the priest’s involvement in Thorn’s investigation and later provides the setting for his assassination. In this particular
scene, long lines of people have formed in front of the confessional, showing that
the act is nothing unusual and widely appreciated. The means of camera movements and shot selection employed in this sequence shed light on the effects of
the difficult working conditions of the priest. Beginning with a panning medium
shot that captures the amount of people waiting, the short scene continues with a
shot inside the confessional. In contrast to the noise and the voices accompanying
the first shot, the audio line to these pictures only contains Fielding’s voice and
the report of his gun. The camera is now absolutely stationary, conveying only
Fielding’s movement and the motionless priest in a close-up shot on eye-level.
This selection of filmic devices emphasizes how the minister is almost paralyzed
by his work, which he tries to pursue with great dedication. We must also take into
account that confession is not simply a means of small talk or personal relief for
the believer, but a religious necessity for absolution. Since the priest is the only
one able to accept a confession, his role as a spiritual leader is eminent even in
spite of the unsoundness of his mental and physical health.
For that matter, the priest himself is evidence of another sacrament, namely
the ordination. This special kind of blessing is endowed by the spiritual authority
of the church and enables him to effectively administer sacraments. His presence
therefore hints at a higher, functioning ecclesiastic authority.
A sacrament that is not directly present in the film is communion. There is no
celebration of communion and none of the characters mention it directly. It is
reasonable to believe that communion cannot take place in the world of Soylent
Green, because of the horrendous price of bread and wine. But perhaps featuring
communion in this film was avoided purposefully since it might mock Christian
beliefs and thus compromise the generally positive depiction of Christianity. In a
world in which people eat food made from the dead everyday, the somewhat similar procedure of communion would be hardly bearable. As if to close this gap in
the set of religious rituals, the euthanasia procedure involves a perverted version
of communion. The priest-like executioners hand the poison to the Jew Solomon
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Moritz Emmelmann
Roth in a large goblet, much like the ones used in Mass. It remains unclear
whether the theological implications of this are meant to suggest a conflict between Judaism and Christianity, or whether they are just a side effect of the imitative elements in the cult.
Stronghold of Morality
In view of the dysfunctional society of Soylent Green and in opposition to the barbaric business scheme of the corporation, the church becomes a veritable stronghold of morality. I have chosen this admittedly strong expression, because the idea
of defense and safekeeping inherent in the word “stronghold” is similar to the
institution’s function in the film. The priest and his affiliates do not attack or
openly confront the moral failures surrounding them, but rather act as a refuge to
those in difficulties and provide a moral safe-haven.
Most tellingly, the church is repeatedly presented as a trustworthy place where
moral issues are concerned. Soylent manager Simonson, seeking to relieve himself
of his knowledge about the food substitute and to come to terms with his immoral deeds in the past, turns to the church. In his desperation for moral righteousness, this is the place where he wants to go to even at the cost of his life. In
the eyes of this defector, the church is the institution that is the farthest away
from the debauched corporation. At the same time, it is open and accessible.
Another detail supporting the claim that the church is a stronghold is the use
of the church building as the setting for the final battle between Thorn and Fielding. After the wounded Thorn has escaped from the Soylent factory into the
church, the crowd within gives him coverage and he is finally able to decide the
fight in his favor. As it is a battle between truth and lie, between morality and
immorality, this choice of location is significant. It indicates that the building is
home ground to the hero and a helpful ally against his opponents. Again, the
church has a considerable impact on the course of events. While it remains unclear whether Thorn’s investigations are going to provoke profound changes, he
has done everything in his power to contribute to a good cause. This is exactly
what the priest and the church are doing as well and it shows an attitude of persistent courage, which is most benevolently portrayed by the makers of Soylent Green.
Criticism
Following the presentation of my paper in the seminar and at the undergraduate
conference in June and July of 2009, fellow students stated some criticism. It
mainly concerned the question of whether or not to consider the activities of the
priest and the church as lasting accomplishments and thus arrive at a positive
reading of their depiction – as this chapter claims. Arguments brought up against
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this reading are the limited effects on society in general, and an understanding of
the priest’s exhaustion as incompetence. I appreciate these remarks and recognize
that they do form a legitimate interpretation. Yet the outstanding position of the
Christian Church and its representatives in the context of multiple crises is so
strongly emphasized that it is able to refute the counter-arguments. The depiction
of the priest, the church and even Robert Thorn is based on a simple and plausible conclusion: The scale of the challenge does not compromise the value of
moral behavior and altruistic help.
Conclusion
In view of the scarce amount of works published on the film Soylent Green, every
paper on this film requires some initiative to begin and investigate a certain topic.
In this case, the opening observation was the frequent appearance of religious
elements throughout the film. Analyzing and describing the instances of Judaism,
Christianity and a fictional euthanasia cult in the story, my attention then turned
towards the depiction of the Christian Church. There, I paid special attention to
the critical circumstances of social, economic and moral downfall under which it
makes its efforts. The thesis tested here stated that it occupies leading positions on
the fields of charity, spirituality and morality. Various instances of such depiction
found on the levels of plot and scenic realization supported this reading, for example, the reliance of multiple characters on the church in moral issues or the
choice of the church building for the final battle. The sum of these arguments
outweighs remarks that are critical of such a reading of the film and opens up new
questions concerning the relations between the different religious groups. With
my argumentation, I hope to have shown the relevance of religious institutions for
the film and to have sharpened the perception of the moral and religious discourse.
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Moritz Emmelmann
Works Cited
Bereton, Pat. Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema. Bristol: Intellect, 2005. Print.
Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, ed. Die Bibel: Nach der Übersetzung Martin Luthers.
Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001. Print.
Harrison, Harry. Make Room! Make Room!. 1966. New York: Tom Doherty Associates,
2008. Print.
Lipschutz, Ronnie D. “‘Soylent Green … is … PEOPLE!’: Labour, Bodies and Capital in the Global Political Economy.” Millenium 34 (2005). 573-76. Print.
Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New Brunswick,
NY/London: Rutgers UP, 1999. Print.
Soylent Green. Dir. Richard Fleischer. Perf. Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, and
Edward G. Robinson. 1973. MGM, 2003. DVD.
Part III
Themes and Motifs of Science Fiction Films
Dennis Kogel/Iris Schäfer
The Doppelgänger Motif in Science Fiction Film
Introduction
When the word doppelgänger appears in science fiction or fantasy it tends to denote a creature, whether alien or demon, that can take on the shape of another
person, usually to achieve an evil end. However, the concept of the doppelgänger
in science fiction is not at all limited to these creatures. Derived from the Gothic
double, the doppelgänger has been a part of science fiction since its very inception
and has developed into several recurring motifs, such as clones, robots, virtual
avatars or parallel selves, that can be found throughout science fiction film. John
Herdman defines the doppelgänger as:
a second self, or alter ego, which appears as a distinct and separate being
apprehensible by the physical senses (or at least, by some of them), but exists in a dependent relation to the original. By ‘dependent’ we do not mean
‘subordinate’, for often the double comes to dominate, control and usurp
the functions of the subject; but rather that, qua double, it has its raison
d’être in its relation to the original. Often, but not always, the subject and
his double are physically similar, often to the point of absolute identity.
(Herdmann 14)
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Dennis Kogel / Iris Schäfer
Unquestioningly, the doppelgänger motif is an important theme appearing in
many literary and scientific works from Socrates and Plato to the German Schauerroman and psychoanalysis. Even today many stories and movies are centered
around pairs of contrasting or complementing figures (e.g. Palahniuk’s/Fincher’s
Fightclub), often subtly presenting variations on the doppelgänger motif as introduced by Jean-Paul Richter and E.T.A. Hoffmann. The discourse surrounding the
double in literature and film, though, is mostly concerned with its use in Gothic
literature and modern adaptations, where it mainly serves to portray the dualism
of the self. However, one of the earliest works of science fiction is also considered
a Gothic classic: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.1 In it a young scientist named Victor
Frankenstein creates a monstrous creature out of spare human parts, brings it to
life and is haunted by it. The story introduces the Gothic doppelgänger into science fiction in the shape of the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and its
creation, who appear to mirror each other’s actions. Therefore it is important to
examine the doppelgänger not only as a motif of nineteenth-century Gothic literature, but also as a motif inherent in science fiction.
Although today science fiction has its place as an important social and scientific commentary, it first became mainstreamed through mass publication and
without the respect of critics.2 The equivalent of science fiction pulp novels of the
past are today’s blockbuster films and series aimed at commercial success. Within
these genres, certain thematic conventions concerning the doppelgänger motif
have been established through commercial or critical success. Frank Dietz identifies three so-called “stages” of the Double in science fiction: the “mechanical
doppelgänger” (the double in the purest sense), the “allohistorical doppelgänger”
(meaning parallel worlds or histories) and “wetware” (the dissolution of the self in
digital form) (Dietz 209-210). But little has been said about the effect of the doppelgänger and its forms in science fiction film and series. We want to expand
Dietz’ three categories of doppelgänger (mechanical, allohistorical, virtual) to five
distinct motifs used in film and serial TV (clones, artificial intelligence, time travel,
parallel universes, virtual identities). By applying those motifs to films discussed in
the 2009 Undergraduate Conference “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks” such
as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Blade Runner or The Matrix as well as to films we
consider key works for the doppelgänger motif in science fiction such as 12 Monkeys, Ghost in the Shell or the Star Trek series we hope to show how the idea of the
self is both presented and challenged in contemporary film, how it relates to the
1
2
“[M]uch science-fiction criticism talks about the origins of SF in the nineteenth century …
[science-fiction author and critic] Brian Aldiss sees Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) as the first
SF text” (Roberts 48).
“Both [Jules] Verne and [H.G.] Wells were writing deliberately popular fiction and working
within the traditions of popular publishing of their day … In America, the popular market also
dictated the beginnings of SF as a serious market. In particular, this is connected with the cheap
magazine format known as ‘Pulp’” (Roberts 67).
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challenges and issues of modern capitalism in an information society and what it
tells us about the shifting values of human life and identity.
Clones
A clone is an exact genetic replica of a living creature that exists independently of
its original and usually with an agency of its own. Due to the physical similarity
and the resulting ability to easily and unnoticeably stand in for or replace the
original, the human clone is one of the most obvious and formulaic manifestations
of the double in science fiction. Because of the clone trope’s focus on replacement, Dietz assigns clones as well as robots and AIs to his category of the “mechanical doppelgänger.” He writes that
the mechanical doppelgänger usurps the role of the original self. This tradition of the mechanical double extends from Frankenstein to the numerous
stories in which robots, androids, or clones attempt to replace humans.
(209-10)
A single clone or a small number of them may often be a direct threat to the
original’s existence, either by planning to remove it or by demanding a share of
the original’s previously unquestioned identity. Science fiction plots with a limited
number of clones show the most similarities with the Gothic doppelgänger as they
usually involve a direct confrontation between the original and the usurper and
question the validity of the original’s identity. A single clone may also serve as a
dark mirror to the original, reflecting only its negative attributes and thus creating
a duality of the self. 3 This motif is often found in Gothic stories.
An uncountable multitude of clones, of which the clone army in the Star Wars
prequels is the most popular example, confronts not only the originals but humankind as a whole with the idea that human beings are just another massproducible commodity. In their number, mass-produced clones usually represent
an expendable working class: The clones in Star Wars are used exclusively as soldiers and are immediately replaced upon their death. Therefore, they are not encouraged to develop an identity of their own, and their identical bodies reflect
their identical functions and absence of a self. For Dietz, the mass-produced clone
depicts a society constructed around the idea of Taylorism.
3
See, for example, Jean-Luc Picard’s “evil” clone in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002).
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Clones … signify the ultimate triumph of mass production … The clone …
represents the introduction of Talyorism to human reproduction. … The
notion of the original individual, still visible in the conflict between human
and robot is now almost entirely lost. Duplication has resulted in anonymity. … (Dietz 212)
A clone army or clone labor force does not only mirror the existing human working class and the struggle with corporate identity, but also reflects the fear of a
devaluation and destruction of an “original” identity and the displacement of human workers in favor of mass-produced machinery.
The mere existence of clones as such raises the question to what extent a human being can be duplicated, i.e. to what extent the original’s identity may be reproduced and which parts of its identity constitute the original. If a clone possesses the same body and the same hereditary traits, how can it be distinguishable
from the original? Can the original prove its originality or the duplicate be unaware of the fact that it is a copy? The action movie The 6th Day (2000) features a
protagonist who tries to uncover a cloning conspiracy to eventually find out that
he and not the assumed doppelgänger is the clone. But does the fact that he is a
copy mean that he has no claim to the identity that he feels is his? The 6th Day
affirms the superiority of the original by letting the clone relinquish its claim, but
at the end of the movie the clone nevertheless stands before the task of creating a
new, original identity for itself. Its first step to achieve this is to put physical distance between itself and the original by taking off to Argentina, adopting the assumption that in order to create its own space it must not in any way come in
contact with the original’s space. Thus it appears that both the original and the
copy have a need for an identity and existence unique to themselves – a conflict
that can be resolved either violently or peacefully.
In the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the small-town doctor Miles Bennell returns from a medical conference to discover that the inhabitants of his town
are being replaced by hollow duplicates originating from alien seedpods. While
strictly speaking these duplicates are not clones because they do not share the
original’s DNA, they fulfill similar functions as the clone trope: both are indistinguishable copies of a human original. Like clones, the seedpods threaten the concept of identity as something secure and inalienable. In fact, they plan to erase all
notions of identity and personhood. In this context, it is important to note that
the film has been interpreted as both anti-communist and anti-McCarthyist. As
Steven M. Sanders writes:
nobody has established whether Invasion is a protest against the political and
social conformity called for by right-wing anti-Communists or that demanded by pro-Soviet collectivists … . (59)
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Both communism and the corporate structure of capitalism as they were seen
in the climate of the 1950s United States include the threat of identity loss and
assimilation into a culture that consists of mere copies. As the body snatchers and
the clone trope personify this attack on personhood, they can be understood as
stand-ins for any ideology that is perceived as a threat in the same sense.
However, unlike the clones or the Gothic doppelgänger, the pod people simply want to do away with identity altogether. They neither question our understanding of the concept nor force us to redefine the term. Due to the film’s adherence to a strict “us” versus “them” mentality, Invasion of the Body Snatchers defends
the notion of identity as a stable unity even while the pod people seem to gain the
upper hand. During the early stages of the invasion, Becky Driscoll’s friend Wilma
Lentz insists that her (already-snatched) Uncle Ira “isn’t Uncle Ira.” Despite the
fact that he looks like him, acts like him and has the same memories, she has revealed him as a fake and could not be fooled to confuse him with her uncle. This
suggests that even when all facets that constitute an identity have been copied,
there can only be one “true” Uncle Ira that the copy can neither measure up to
nor authentically replace. It can merely attempt to create a superficial illusion of
being the same person. The only moment of genuine doubt occurs when Bennell
finds a number of unfinished pod people in a greenhouse. When looking at the
seedpod transforming into the body of his love interest Becky, he hesitates and
cannot immediately bring himself to kill it. But when he passes Becky’s pod to
move on to a copy of himself, he immediately lifts the pitchfork he carries to destroy it. While there may be a surface confusion between a copy and another person, apparently no moment of confusion between the copy and the self arises:
Bennell does not fear to hurt himself by destroying his seedpod. Even without the
“happy ending” frame narrative4, the film would have a much more unifying message than most modern films working with the clone trope: you can either keep
your identity or lose it but it cannot be torn into parts.
Artificial Intelligence
The concept and function of the AI in science fiction film is similar to that of the
clone, but differs in significant ways. An AI or artificial intelligence is a humanlike
machine, created for a certain purpose (e.g. service or warfare). AIs are usually
built as a double of a specific human being (e.g. its inventor) or they are constructed with the idea of a human being in mind. Famous examples are AIs like
the murderous HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Data, the android who devel4
In the original cut of Body Snatchers, the film ends with a horrified Dr. Bennell standing on a
highway shouting: “You’re next!” As it was believed that such a bleak ending would be too disturbing for a contemporary audience, a frame narrative was added that shows a more hopeful
possibility of Bennell escaping to the city and notifying the authorities (LaValley 125).
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ops feelings in the Star Trek: The New Generation series, the NS-5 robots struggling
for equal rights in the blockbuster I, Robot based on the Asimov story of the same
title, or the replicants in Blade Runner.
The common question in most science fiction stories centering around or involving AIs of various sorts is the examination of identity. What constitutes an
identity? Is it the programmed function of the AI that determines all aspects of its
existence, or is it possible to create an individual identity based on experience with
the outer world? Through mass-production AIs become a new, mechanized working-class struggling – like clones – for an identity and a space of their own.
In contrast to the clone, however, the AI has no clear-cut original. It is not a
doppelgänger of one person, but rather mirrors a concept of a person or a stereotype. The AI is, to use Baudrillard’s terms, a “sign” of “real” humanity and in
science fiction usually threatens to become its own “pure simulacrum” without an
origin (Baudrillard 169). The replicants in Blade Runner are a good example: Pris is
designed as a “pleasure model,” Roy Batty for combat and Rachael as an assistant.
They are what Herdman, borrowing a term from Joseph Frank, calls “quasidoubles”:
Quasi-doubles come in various forms, but always have an unambiguously
independent existence within the fictional scheme. Frank cites ‘characters
who exist in their own right, but reflect some internal aspect of another
character in a strengthened form.’ … Quasi-doubles may also, however, be
complementary opposites, whether Platonic soul-mates or, more often,
characters whose unlikeness and contradictions reflect hostility and conflict,
yet at the same time mutual dependence and interlocked destinies. … Such
characters are sometimes inaccurately referred to as ‘mirror-images.’ (14)
The “complementary” or “reflecting” attributes can also be found in the replicants
of Blade Runner. Batty’s combat prowess reveals Deckard’s physical weakness,
while Rachael’s sensibility contrasts with his cold-heartedness. According to Dietz,
androids and robots confront the viewer with concepts of “alienated labour” (211)
and pose both “capitalist menace to mankind” and “socialist threat to the middle
classes” (211). The struggle of the AI to be accepted as part of the society doubles
the struggle of the working classes for equality and power. Or, as Dietz argues,
“the robot as the worker represents the part of human experience excluded from
the intergalactic and imperialists plots of space operas” (212).
Similar to the clone in science fiction narratives, films dealing with AIs seldom
deal exclusively with the AI as a mass, but often incorporate the struggle of an
individual machine to be recognized not as a copy, but an original. HAL 9000
claims individuality and differentiates itself from the identical HAL 9000 on Earth,
and the replicants in Blade Runner strive to leave behind their predestined life as
automatons with a brief lifespan and finally become “more human than human.”
Blade Runner not only shows androids fighting to emancipate themselves from
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their status as mere doubles of human beings, but also questions our distinction
between human and artificial doppelgängers. Dietz states that “Deckard’s job as a
bounty hunter makes him become more detached and less emphatic, that is more
what an android is supposed to be” (214). The supposedly human characters in
Blade Runner seem less human than the replicants. Their status as those who are
left behind on planet Earth further strengthens the impression that what is left of
humanity on Earth is not what is associated with being human. At the end, when
it is implied that Deckard might escape from the city with Rachael, and when he
shows emotions towards her, there is even a possibility that he himself might be
the last missing replicant. Blade Runner thereby blurs the lines between what we
perceive as human or artificial, and it shows that our robot doubles might indeed
become “more human” than ourselves and that the line dividing original identity
from reproduced identity is arbitrary.
Time Travel
When time travel plots deal with a journey into the more or less recent past or
near future, they become relevant for the doppelgänger motif, since this type of
plot at the very least enables and usually involves a meeting between two or more
different versions of a person. Unlike clones or AIs, these different selves all occupy a legitimate and uncontested position in their respective space-time frame.
Neither can be seen as a copy of the other. Nevertheless, the time travelers create
an equally significant contrast between each other as the clone or AI and its original. As the kind of contrast depends very much on the type of time traveling plot,
the time travel doppelgänger can be used to address a wide range of themes. In
respect to their depiction of the timeline, time travel stories can be divided into
three basic types.
The first type treats time as a predetermined constant, where the past can be
visited but the chain of events cannot be changed. While time travelers can take
actions, they can only do so because they have already – albeit unknowingly –
taken them in the past of their own timeline. More so, usually their own actions in
the past lead up to the events which make them travel through time in the first
place, creating a causal time-loop that repeats itself infinitely.
This sort of story is called a time-loop paradox because cause and effect are
not only reversed but put into a circle: the later events are caused by the
earlier events, and the earlier by the later. (Penley 119)
In this deterministic timeline, doppelgängers meet one another at different stages
in their lives, exhibiting contrasting attributes and thus exemplifying the effect of
time and outer circumstances on the person. In the film Twelve Monkeys, the protagonist Cole is a little boy when he sees himself die as a grown man who has just
failed to prevent the catastrophe that is about to take place. At that moment, Cole
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stands both at the beginning and the end of his own story. He is entirely ignorant
and innocent, and at the same time the only person who knows exactly what is
going to happen. While this appears to be contradictory, the two versions of Cole
merely constitute two opposing poles in the span of his personal development.
Their coexistence in this moment of time highlights the magnitude of this development, revealing that the same person can have opposing qualities through time.
Thus while from the objective perspective of external time it may appear
that there are two different persons, when we focus on personal identity
from the objective perspective of personal time, there is only one Cole,
who happens to exist at a certain external point in time twice. (Devlin 109)
This moment is also the first and last time that Cole sees Kathryn Railly. This
becomes important for their love story as Railly becomes aware of the younger
Cole’s presence and the fact that he is watching her kneel over the older Cole’s –
his dying self’s – body. For Railly, this moment becomes a farewell at the same
time as it is a greeting. She mourns Cole’s death at the end of their story, but when
she notices the young Cole, she smiles at him in recognition, remembering what
the dying Cole had said about seeing a woman at the airport before the viral outbreak. Cole thus becomes a double for Railly as well, since she now realizes that
their story has ended and begun at the exact same time and that even though the
Cole she knows is dying, his younger self will see her again. While time travelers in
a deterministic time travel story will meet a doppelgänger who is a younger or
older version of themselves, a time traveler in any of the other types of time traveling stories can only meet a doppelgänger that is not quite them and thus can
only reflect what they are not but could have been.
In the second type of time travel plot the timeline is a highly vulnerable construct, so that any meddling with the past can create a completely new present and
erase the old one. This concept is most famously realized in the Back to the Future
series, where in the first film the protagonist Marty McFly travels to the past and
threatens the likelihood of his own conception by accidentally making his mother
fall in love with him instead of his father. Marty carries with him a photograph of
himself and his siblings and the more unlikely their future becomes, the more
translucent the people turn in the photograph. This type of story suggests that
while there is only one timeline, its direction can be changed from any given point.
Thus, when Jennifer meets her future self in Back to the Future II (1989) she only
meets a possible version of herself, one that will never exist since Marty changes
the direction of the timeline in the present. This type of story often features the
intervention of dystopian future selves in the present in order to prevent their own
existence. The doppelgänger here becomes a possible future version of a strongly
contrasting present self, but one that is regarded as highly negative and thus must
and wants to be prevented in favor of a preferred outcome. In the TV show Heroes
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(2006), for example, the character Hiro is visited by a future self that he must not
become.
The third and last type we consider here is based on Hugh Everett’s relative
state or many-worlds interpretation, which claims that for every possible outcome
there is a separate world in which this outcome takes place. For a time traveler this
means that when he travels back in time he will arrive and make changes in a timeline parallel to his own. Paul J. Nahin describes it as follows:
According to this idea, if a time traveler journeys into the past and introduces a change (indeed, his very journey may be the change), then, as
Gardner stated, reality splits into two versions, with one fork representing
the result of the change and the other fork being the original reality before
the change. (295)
Therefore a time traveler can make any possible changes without threatening his
own existence because his original timeline has been split from the universe he
now occupies from his first differentiating action onwards. When the time traveler
meets his parallel self he may interact with it freely, quite unlike the predetermined
interaction in the deterministic timeline or the possibly fatal interaction in the
variable timeline. We can see this kind of unconcerned interaction between the
two Spocks at the end of Star Trek (2009), where the older Spock, knowing his
parallel self’s potential but recognizing him as a separate individual, takes the role
of an adviser to his younger counterpart.
Parallel Universes
In science fiction, time travel is not the only way to access a parallel universe. A
time traveler like the older Spock in Star Trek may create a parallel universe
through his changes in the past, but others, not from the past or future but from a
parallel present, may visit it at any time after its creation. While Spock encounters
a universe similar to his own, as the changes have only begun with his journey, a
person traveling into this universe a hundred years later will likely encounter
something that he does not recognize at all. Although according to the manyworlds interpretation, the universe splits “at every microinstant” (Nahin 295) and
therefore causes an infinity of minimally different worlds, the parallel universes
visited in science fiction are almost always extremely different from the “original”
universe. Similar to the dystopian future self, the doppelgänger from a parallel
universe shows us the potential for personal development that lies within us –
only that the dystopian future self has been altered by events that have taken place
between its present and the present of the self it visits, while the parallel self has
diverged from the “original” from birth onwards by being brought up in a different society and under different circumstances. Dietz states that “the allohistorical
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double liberates alternative selves repressed by the dominant society and personality. Allohistorical fiction deals with the question of what might have been” (214).
A particularly crass example of the doppelgänger from the parallel universe is
the Star Trek franchise’s mirror universe first introduced in The Original Series’ episode “Mirror, Mirror” (1967). Star Trek’s humanist utopia is met by a fascist
dystopia in which each of the Star Trek characters occupies the exact same position (which is highly improbable but serves its purpose) but handles it with the
cruelty and egotism that is encouraged by the mirror universe society. However,
the characters are not the only ones who have duplicates in this parallel universe:
every facet down to the crew’s spaceship and their very mission has been duplicated and inverted, so much so that the mirror universe itself appears as a doppelgänger. Or to put it in Captain Kirk’s words: “It’s our Enterprise. But it isn’t!”
Both crews want the resources of the planet they are orbiting, but while the Federation crew attempts to find a peaceful solution, the Imperial crew threatens to
annihilate the protesting natives.
In the episode “Mirror, Mirror,” a landing crew consisting of Captain Kirk,
Dr. McCoy, Uhura and Mr. Scott are exchanged with their mirror counterparts
during their attempt to transport back to the ship and find themselves on the
Imperial Enterprise instead. The scene of stepping over the threshold borrows
much of its audiovisual effects from the Gothic with unnerving music and thunder and lightning (here caused by an ion storm) recalling the monster’s creation in
Frankenstein (1931). The image of the Enterprise in orbit flickers, interjected with
green and red lights, before it is flipped around to represent the mirror universe.
The spirit of the mirror universe itself recalls Dr. Jekyll’s Mr. Hyde: it is impulsive,
sadistic and sexually indulgent. Uhura’s uniform becomes even more revealing in
the mirror universe and she has to fight off the crude sexual advances of crewman
Mr. Sulu. The conflict between the “civilized” Starfleet officers and their “barbarian” counterparts follows the Gothic dualism between good and evil or, in Freudian terms, superego and id, but instead of depicting that dualism in one split
person, the use of a parallel universe allows this dualism to be portrayed through
the interactions of several individually whole people.
However, even though both universes and the opposing personalities within
them occupy valid positions in their own spaces, “Mirror, Mirror” negates the
deconstruction of identity as a constant and a “true” versus “false” mentality in a
parallel universe by letting the members of the “original” Star Trek universe gain
superiority over the universe of the “other.” Not only do the Starfleet crew members attempt to intervene in the Imperial plans according to their own standards
and thus impose their values upon the foreign universe, but they also manage to
convert the mirror version of Spock to their value system through argument:
Kirk:
Spock:
I submit to you that your empire is illogical, because it cannot endure. I submit you are illogical to be a willing part of it.
You have one minute and twenty-three seconds.
Kirk:
Spock:
Kirk:
Spock:
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If change is inevitable, predictable, beneficial, doesn’t logic demand that you be a part of it?
One man cannot summon the future.
But one man can change the present! … What will it be? Past or
future? Tyranny or freedom? It’s up to you. … In every revolution
there is one man with a vision.
Captain Kirk, I shall consider it.
This argument and Spock’s reaction to it suggests that the only reason for a parallel self to differ from the “original” is a lack of information or logical thinking and
thus a flaw in that version of the self that keeps it from realizing its full (the
“original’s”) potential. “Mirror, Mirror” thus reinstates the superiority of the normative self and undermines the threat to the self posed by the parallel doppelgänger.
While Star Trek takes a still very regressive stance towards the existence of
multiple independent selves in the 1960s, its view on the universe has become
much more complex when it revisits the mirror universe in the Deep Space Nine
episode “Crossover” (1994). The universe is still a dystopia – the human totalitarian regime has been replaced by an alien one in which the humans are now enslaved – but Star Trek now very darkly reflects on its own converting message
voiced through Kirk in “Mirror, Mirror” by making it the cause of the current
distress. Due to Spock’s attempts to reform the Empire according to Kirk’s vision, the Empire was overthrown and enslaved by alien races who now rule in an
equally cruel way. The characters in the mirror universe are no longer simply dark
copies of those from the Star Trek universe, but constitute personalities in their
own right who are not simply dismissed as inferior or unfavorable by the crewmen
passing over the threshold. The mirror selves’ divergences are attributed to their
different environments and experiences and stress the importance of nurture for
the character development and present identity as something fluid and changeable.
As their attributes are not seen as universally good or bad (despite the conflict
between Major Kira and her doppelgänger, Kira finds character traits in her double she admires) and they inhabit a space separate from the Starfleet crewmen,
they become equal and dynamic counterparts to the characters from the Star Trek
universe and in many instances complete rather than threaten their identity by
showing them what they could have been.
Virtual Identities
With the rise of the Cyberpunk sub-genre in the 1980s, Dietz also sees the rise of
“wetware” as a model of the self. “Wetware,” a popular Cyberpunk term, describes something that is tradeable, exchangeable, fluid, and – most importantly –
digital. As Dietz writes:
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If we are only wetware, then duplication loses its terror. The free roleplaying of multiple selves has replaced much of the anxiety over the loss of
selfhood exhibited in traditional science fiction. … The figure of the doppelgänger has therefore lost much of its mystical awe. In a sense, the word
double is no longer accurate, as many recent texts have transcended the duality of protagonist and alter ego by envisioning the self as infinitely fluid.
(218)
Instead of fighting to be accepted as an original in its own right, an individual
separate from other individuals, we can embrace a multiplicity of selves. This is
the third stage of Dietz’ understanding of the doppelgänger motif in science fiction and probably the most positive depiction of the double. Without fear of being usurped by the double, it is finally possible to go beyond traditional notions of
the self and use a multitude of doubles as an extension of the self, a hive mind.
The self, Dietz contends,
is now seen as a mere part of the technological landscape in which the oppositions of self and other, or organic and mechanical, are seen as meaningless. By depicting the sale and purchase of artificial personalities (if the term
artificial is even applicable here) in an economy dominated by interplanetary corporations, these cyberpunk novels gone (sic.) beyond the concept of
alienation, as they presume character as a commodity. In a world where
huge corporations not only own the products of labor, but also the copyright for personalities of the workers, the old concept of the self no longer
exists. … the central position of the self has vanished. … (218-19)
With Dietz’ praise for “wetware” comes a cautionary warning against the self as a
commodity possessed by multinational corporations. However, he cites many
positive examples of the Virtual Identity in science fiction literature. Among these
are Rudy Rucker’s Wetware and Michael Swanwick’s Vacuum Flowers.
But if the concept of “wetware” and the multitude of selves has caught on in
science fiction literature, it is still a rare occasion that science fiction film embraces
or even touches upon it. The most recent addition might be Joss Whedon’s TVseries Dollhouse (2009), which is set in a near future and features so called “dolls,”
regular humans, who exist in a “blank state” after their memory was downloaded
onto hard-drives, and who are used to embody various roles from callboys and
girls to hired goons by having the personality needed for the job “uploaded” onto
them. The series’ main protagonist Echo keeps certain memories, even after new
personalities over-write the used ones, and thereby develops a personality comprised of a multitude of selves. Dollhouse certainly features the self as a commodity,
but ultimately depicts the loss of the original self as ethically questionable. It is
therefore no surprise that the show revolves around Echo’s quest to develop her
self and stop remaining in a fluid state.
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The most positive rendition of a “wetware” self is to be found not in a liveaction film but in the anime Ghost in the Shell directed by Mamoru Oshii and based
on the manga by Masamune Shirow. Members of a government special unit in a
cyberpunk version of Hong Kong where people are bionically enhanced, security
robots roam the streets and corporations hold the power, are hunting the hacker
Puppetmaster, who is able to “ghosthack” actual people, use them as he sees fit
and access their personality, memory and experience. In the course of events, the
film’s protagonist Motoko Kusanagi finds out that the Puppetmaster used to be a
government AI called 2501 that has developed a consciousness and subsequently
gone rogue. Motoko decides to “merge” with 2501, as it wants to experience human emotions, life, death and birth and in exchange grants Motoko an extension
of the self and freedom from the limitations of a traditional identity. She sheds her
old body and transcends traditional identity.
A similar, yet more negatively depicted character in recent science fiction film
is Agent Smith from The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003). Smith is a sentient program, a
so-called Agent who protects the Matrix from intruders and whose main goal it is
to destroy the rebels’ hideout Zion. As an Agent, Smith is able to use other humans in the Matrix as an extended self. He can use their senses, read their minds
and possess their bodies. After his defeat by Neo in The Matrix, Smith becomes a
virus detached from the Matrix’ control, further develops his personality and gains
the ability to copy himself over other beings both in the Matrix and the outside
world. This results in a massive Smith “infection” in The Matrix Revolutions. Smith
becomes legion, a virus comprised of a multitude of people all overwritten by
himself. Instead of being able to tap into the hive mind of the world, he erases any
notion of individuality in the Matrix. He becomes the perfected version of a body
snatcher and much like his clone “cousins” he stands for the attack on the self –
this time not by capitalist corporations, socialist ideology or bio-engineering but
by technology’s rapidly growing reach.
Smith thus becomes the ultimate enemy of Neo and the Matrix alike and is ultimately destroyed. The Matrix Trilogy takes a very regressive stance towards technology. The digital “evil” Smith, who is in fact less useful and able than his former
Agent self, has to be defeated to keep Zion, a crude mix between technology and
tribalism, safe. Here, wetware is considered not as a next step towards transhumanism,5 but as an attack on individuality. Smith is presented not as a machine
that has discovered its own self or an entity with a fluid identity but as a corporate,
viral and “evil” identity that threatens to “overwrite” the free world. Zion’s fight
for survival is the fight against technology (or, in the language of The Matrix, “the
machines”) and for the perseverance of the individual self.
5
Transhumanism refers to the belief that it is possible to enhance mankind, overcome its limitations through technology, and progress to a not clearly defined state of post-humanity. See also
A History of Transhumanist Thought by Nick Bostrom.
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Conclusion
While many articles have been written on the double in science fiction literature,
doppelgängers in science fiction films have not received the same amount of attention. With this chapter, we hope to have shown that while in many ways similar
to Dietz’s “three stages of the double” in science fiction literature, science fiction
film has developed its own language and routinized forms of the double. Most
importantly, the doppelgänger in science fiction film illustrates a development of
the notion of identity from fixed personalities closely linked to status and power
to a more open concept that allows for the development of identity and eventually
a multi-voiced identity.
Following Dietz’s theory we can identify several examples for each “stage.”
The first stage, the “mechanical double” consists of clones and AIs and shows a
struggle to define identity. Films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which depict a
clone attack, show identity as something solid and fixed, as a possession of the
individual self that can be lost and has to be defended. On the other hand, more
recent films focus on the struggle of clones to have an identity in their own right,
showing that identity is something that has to be created, fought for even, but
cannot simply be copied. AIs undergo a very similar struggle. On the one hand,
they are a threat to the traditional notion of identity as something organic and
human. On the other hand, AIs with developing identities struggle to be accepted
as autonomous beings, rather than to be considered mere machines as is demonstrated in Blade Runner.
Doppelgängers of the second, or “allohistorical,” stage appear in films featuring time travel and parallel universes. Within a time travel plot the protagonist can
encounter three different types of doppelgänger: If it is a “closed loop”-story, the
doppelgänger illustrates certain developmental stages in the life of the time traveler. If it is a changeable timeline, the time traveler often has to deal with a dystopian self. If a story follows the many-worlds interpretation, no changes can be
made while traveling through time, because traveling through time here equals
traveling to a parallel universe. In this kind of story, the double poses no threat
but can be an aide to the protagonist. When they are not encountered through
time travel, parallel universes differ starkly from the “original” universe in significant ways. This depiction is used to show characters who look the same in very
contrasting roles. It emphasizes nurture over nature. It is also one of the few doppelgänger motifs that acknowledges an autonomous place for the doppelgänger.
The third stage, the virtual identity, might be the most controversial topic for
science fiction film. While many cyberpunk ideas of a fluid, downloadable and
changeable identity have become mainstreamed in science fiction literature
through now famous novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) or Neal
Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), its use in film has been rather limited. Film characters that can possess a wetware kind of personality are often a threat to the notion of individuality. Like Agent Smith from The Matrix Trilogy they are feared for
139
being able to erase individuality and replace it with conformity. The promise of a
multi-voiced, non-traditional identity is only seldom realized. We would argue that
science fiction films defend a traditional, fixed, singular construct of identity. This
one-sided depiction of virtual identities seems to become more common. Films
like Avatar (2009) or Surrogates (2009) undermine the perception of a unity of mind
and body. Jake Sully in Avatar is using an artificial body to communicate with the
alien Na’vi and subsequently becomes more Na’vi than human, but stays both
Jake Sully and Na’vi. Surrogates shows a society in which everybody uses a so called
“surrogate,” to interact with the outside world. Those surrogates are an exchangeable extension of the user’s self and while they are often seen as a danger to individuality, they carry the promise of transhumanism. Ultimately, doppelgängers in
science fiction films show the rapid changes in the perception of identity that have
taken place in the last 50 years and that are pointing to a future in which what
constitutes an identity is not something fixed, but extendable, changeable, fluid
and even more than the sum of its parts.
Films Cited
12 Monkeys. Dir. Terry Gilliam. Perf. Bruce Willis, Joseph Melito, Madeleine Stowe,
Brad Pitt. Universal Studios, 1995. DVD.
2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Rain. MGM, 1968. DVD.
Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver,
Stephen Lang. Twentieth Century Fox, 2009.
Back to the Future. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Perf. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea
Thompson, Crispin Glover. Universal Studios, 1985. DVD.
Back to the Future Part II. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Perf. Michael J. Fox, Christopher
Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson. Universal Studios, 1989. DVD.
Blade Runner (The Director’s Cut). Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Harisson Ford, Rutger Hauer,
Daryl Hannah, Sean Young. Warner Home Video, 1982. DVD.
“Crossover.” Star Trek Deep Space Nine – The Complete Second Season. Dir. David Livingstone. Writ. Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Peter Allan Fields. Perf. Avery
Brooks, Alexander Siddig, Colm Meaney, Nana Visitor. Paramount, 1994. DVD.
Dollhouse: Season One. Writ. Joss Whedon. Perf. Eliza Dushku, Harry Lenix, Fran
Kranz, Tahmoh Penikett. Twentieth Century Fox Television, 2009. DVD.
Frankenstein. Dir. James Whale. Perf. Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, Mae Clarke, John
Boles. Universal Studios, 1931. DVD.
Ghost in the Shell. Dir. Mamoru Oshii. Perf. Atsuko Tanaka, Richard Epcar, Akio
Ôtsuka, Iemasa Kayumi. Palm Pictures, 1996. DVD.
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Heroes Season 1. Dir. Lisa Jackson, Jeff Weinstock. Perf. Hayden Panettiere, Masi Oka,
Ali Larter, Adrian Pasdar, Milo Ventimiglia. Universal Studios, 2006. DVD.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Perf. Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter,
Larry Gates, Carolyn Jones. Republic Pictures, 1956. DVD.
I, Robot. Dir. Alex Proyas. Perf. Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Alan Tudyk, James
Cromwell. Twentieth Century Fox, 2004. DVD.
“Mirror, Mirror.” Star Trek: The Original Series – Season Two. Dir. Marc Daniels. Writ.
Jerome Bixby, Gene Roddenberry. Perf. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei. Paramount, 1967. DVD.
Star Trek. Dir. J.J. Abrams. Perf. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Karl
Urban. Paramount Pictures, 2009. DVD.
Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Complete First Season. Writ. Gene Roddenberry et al.
Perf. Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Brent Spiner. Paramount,
1987. DVD.
Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones. Dir. George Lucas. Perf. Ewan McGregor,
Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Christopher Lee. Twentieth Century Fox,
2002. DVD.
Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope. Dir. George Lucas. Perf. Mark Hamill, Harisson
Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guiness. Twentieth Century Fox, 1977. DVD.
Surrogates. Dir. Jonathan Mostow. Perf. Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Ving Rhames.
Touchstone Pictures, 2009.
The 6th Day. Dir. Roger Spottiswoode. Perf. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Rapaport, Tony Goldwyn, Michael Rooker. Sony Pictures, 2000. DVD.
The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves, Laurence
Fishburn, Carrie-Ann Moss, Hugo Weaving. Warner Bros., 1999. DVD.
The Matrix Reloaded. Dir. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves,
Laurence Fishburn, Carrie-Ann Moss, Hugo Weaving. Warner Bros., 2003. DVD.
The Matrix Revolutions. Dir. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves,
Laurence Fishburn, Carrie-Ann Moss, Hugo Weaving. Warner Bros., 2003.
DVD.
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulations.” Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings. Ed.
Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988. 166-84. Print.
Bostrom, Nick. “A History of Transhumanist Thought.” Academic Writing Across the
Disciplines. Eds. Michael Rectenwald, Lisa Carl. New York: Pearson Longman,
2011. Print.
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Devlin, William J. “Some Paradoxes of Time Travel in The Terminator and 12 Monkeys.”
The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film. Ed. Steven M. Sanders. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2008. 103-18. Print.
Dietz, Frank. “Secret Sharers: The Doppelgänger Motif in Speculative Fiction.” The
Fantastic Other: An Interface of Perspectives. Eds. Brett Cooke, George E. Slusser, and
Jaume Marti-Olivella. Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998. 209-20. Print.
Herdman, John. The Double in Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Edinburgh: Palgrave Macmillan. 1990. Print.
LaValley, Al. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Rutgers University Press, 1989. Print.
Nahin, Paul J. Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics and Science Fiction. New
York: Springer, 1999. Print.
Penley, Constance. “Time Travel, Primal Scene and the critical Dystopia.” Alien
Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Ed. Annette Kuhn.
London: Verso, 1990. 116-27. Print.
Roberts, Adam. Science Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Rucker, Rudy. Wetware. New York: Avon Books, 1997. Print.
Sanders, Steven M. “Picturing Paranoia: Interpreting Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” The
Philosophy of Science Fiction Film. Ed. Steven M. Sanders. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2008. 55-72. Print.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. London: Oxford
UP, 1971. Print.
Swanwick, Michael. Vacuum Flowers. New York: Ace, 1988. Print.
Stefanie Schwarz
“Can you see?”: The Importance of Vision and the
Eye Motif in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report
Minority Report shows the audience a utopian vision of the future: A special police
unit called ‘Pre-Crime,’ under the lead of Chief John Anderton, can foresee crimes
with the help of so-called Pre-Cogs and prevent them before they are actually
committed. The new crime prevention system seems to be impeccable until the
chief himself has to experience what it means to be adjudged by an unreliable
method. Vision is not only the basis for the plot but also appears in many components of the movie. While watching Minority Report, the eye motif forms one of the
most important images (Friedman). It appears in various ways and builds up one
of the leitmotifs in the film. In this chapter, I want to analyze the dominance and
extensive interpretatory potential of the eye motif. I would argue that in a world
depending on vision, blindness can be an advantage. “Sight is power” but this
power is limited (Bakewell 102). Minority Report shows the “unreliability of human
vision” and that the interpretation of future images can lead to false conclusions
(107). Therefore, John Anderton has to lose sight in order to see (Friedman).
First, I will focus on the appearance of the eye motif in Minority Report, for example when and where it is actually occurring in the movie. In addition, I will
provide some examples where vision and sight are also addressed in the dialogs.
Then, I will turn to my two main points. They are both based on two quotes
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Stefanie Schwarz
which are essential for the movie. More precisely, I will discuss the statement of
the blind drug dealer Lycon – “In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king”
– and how this quote applies to Anderton, and concentrate on the proposition of
Mrs. Hineman, one of the Pre-Crime founders: “In order to see the light, you
have to risk the dark.” I will then explain why everything depends on interpretation and give an example for the failure of the Pre-Crime system, before I end
with my conclusion.
The Eye Motif as a Key Element in Minority Report
Eyes evidently play an important role in Minority Report since there are many
scenes in the movie which deal directly or indirectly with eyes. Their steady appearance seems to hint towards a special message which is essential to the film. In
the movie, there are many ways in which vision, sight, and eyes are referred to.
There are references in the language as well as direct and indirect emphasis on
eyes (Friedman).
In a scene at the beginning of the movie, for instance, the son of the future
criminal Howard Marks cuts out a mask and, as Lester D. Friedman writes,
“plunges a pair of scissors through the eyes of a cardboard picture of Abraham
Lincoln.” Since the scene is primarily focusing on the conversation between
Marks and his wife, the stabbing of the mask’s eyes is only an indirect reference to
the motif. Yet it is important because it foreshadows the fact that the Pre-Cogs
later provide a vision in which it looks as if Howard Marks is going to stab his
wife and her lover with a pair of scissors (Friedman).
Another scene which contains a more direct reference to the eye-motif is the
meeting of Anderton and the blind drug dealer Lycon, who lost his eyeballs. All
that is left are two holes in his face, which he first covers with sunglasses
(Bakewell 101). At first, the reason for his missing eyeballs remains in the dark.
Yet, as Friedman points out in his article, it becomes clear that Lycon chose to be
blind once the fact is revealed that eyes serve as identification marks.
In Minority Report, eyes have replaced the old personal identity cards. Friedman
observes that every person is identified many times a day by retina scans, when
leaving the subway, for example, or when entering a store. More than that, Geoff
Bakewell adds, retina scans are also used to personalize advertisements and required to enter buildings. In addition to this, there are also so-called spyder scanners which work with heat flow sensors. They are used to locate and identify persons in buildings (104). This means a total control by the state and the usage of
spyders makes it sheer impossible to avoid being located and identified by the
authorities. Therefore, it is no wonder that Lycon does not have eyeballs anymore.
According to Friedman, “[t]he drug dealer … has no eyes so he cannot be identified.”
Vision and the Eye Motif in Minority Report
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With its excessive references to vision, Minority Report does not only make use
of the eye-motif superficially but, in Friedman’s words, “fundamentally questions
our sight: How does one see? What does one see? How do we understand what
we see – or think we see?”
These questions are very important especially concerning the Pre-Crime system which depends on vision(s) and which is the basis for the movie. The PreCogs can foresee murders before they actually occur. They have visions, which
they transmit through pictures of the future crime. The Pre-Crime cops then have
to arrange and interpret these pictures. They have to respond and act to what they
have made up out of the pictures and right there is the problem of the system, as
both Friedman and Bakewell have also noted (107). Minority Report presents a system which depends on visions of “unreliable guides” which leaves a lot of space
for mistakes and doubts (Bakewell 110).
References to the Importance of Sight
The eye motif also occurs in the dialogs of the movie through what Friedman
terms “a vast array of spoken references to … eyes.” Howard Marks, for instance,
says that he is blind without his glasses when he returns to his house to get them
and finds his wife together with another man. Here sight is connected with understanding. Marks is enabled to ‘see’ that his wife has been unfaithful to him. Things
become clear for him and he recognizes that his wife has been cheating on him
for a long time.
Friedman also hints at an even more interesting, short statement by Pre-Crime
director Lamar Burgess: “The eyes of the nation are upon us.” Burgess wants PreCrime to become the national security program and therefore cannot risk that
there are any mistakes, flaws or scandals connected with Pre-Crime (Friedman).
He knows that Pre-Crime is under permanent observation and that the government focuses on his company. This puts a lot of pressure on Burgess because
when people know they are watched they try to avoid mistakes and carefully think
their actions through. In this context, then, “sight is power” (Bakewell 102). Sight
is an instrument of putting people under pressure. The one who is watching is
more powerful than the one who is being watched. Western society makes an
enormous usage of this phenomenon. People like to watch others – for example
in TV shows like Big Brother which enable the viewer to take the role of a voyeur.
Watching others is always a form of power because it deals with the value of
knowing more about a person than is desired by them.
The title of this chapter alludes to Pre-Cog Agatha’s “physical as well as metaphysical question” “Can you see?” which – as Friedman notes – “she asks Anderton several times throughout the film.” Agatha wants him to see that Anne was
her mother and imitates her drowning when “she slides back into her own pool”
(Bakewell 102). Of course, the Chief has eyes but he does not understand that
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Stefanie Schwarz
Agatha leads him to the murderer of her mother and that she basically warns him
of Burgess and the future events (102). At this point, Anderton almost appears to
lack vision, a fact that comes literally true during the movie. Several times, Anderton is basically shown one-eyed. As Bakewell explains, the spectator cannot really
see the second eye because “features of Anderton’s face are shrouded in darkness” (107).
“In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king” is a sentence from the
blind drug dealer Lycon whose eyeballs have been completely removed from the
orbits. He says it at the end of his conversation with Anderton. In this scene, Anderton is searching for his drug ‘neuroin’ and says that he is seeking for some
‘clarity.’ It is revealed that the Pre-Crime cop Anderton, a man of the law, uses
drugs. Moreover, he thinks that this drug will ‘clarify’ things even though drugs
are usually taken to experience a distorted perception of the environment. Naturally, drugs have a similar effect as narcotics and reduce clear sight. Drugs are
taken to escape the real world, to experience a state of trance, or, in some cases to
provoke visions.
Even though Anderton is able to see, he seeks clarity from a blind man
(Bakewell 102). Therefore, “sight is power” but power is limited as Bakewell argues (102). Anderton is capable of seeing but this does not “guarantee” that he
actually understands. This makes him unlike the blind Lycon, who may actually
have insight as he understands much quicker and maybe more than the seeing
Anderton (103). In this context, Lycon demonstrates that although he may be
(physically) blind in this moment, Anderton is also blind because, according to
Bakewell, “even a sighted king may be partially blind” (102). Therefore he indicates that “the one-eyed man” actually is the king – king in the land of the blind
because he may have the ability to see like a two-eyed man but also to understand
and interpret things like a blind man.
In addition, Lycon’s quote is a prediction of what will happen to Anderton in
the future because according to Bakewell he will become “a one-eyed man twice”
(102, 104). The first time he becomes one-eyed is after the operation, when “he
lifts the bandage over one eye just enough to let the spyder shine its brilliant light
into his new orb” before the time of recovery is up (104). He does so in order to
let a spyder scan his newly replaced eye preventing arrest by his former colleagues.
This blindness, then, is voluntarily and it saves him from greater evil (104). The
second time Anderton becomes one-eyed is when he drops one of his removed
eyeballs – which he carries in a plastic bag – while trying to enter the Pre-Cog
Temple in the Pre-Crime unit (104). Bakewell states that once more “the destruction of the protagonist’s sight is voluntary” and will lead him later to a greater
vision because he can see more clearly each time he reduces his sight (104). He
can enter the Pre-Crime department, get to the Pre-Cog Agatha, and find Leo
Crow whom he thinks to be his son’s kidnapper, and the story takes its course.
This would not have been possible had Anderton kept his original eyes and not
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followed Mrs. Hineman’s advice: “In order to see the light, you have to risk the
dark” as the Pre-Crime founding member tells him when he visits her in her
greenhouse. With this sentence she implies that Anderton has to get his own eyeballs removed before he will be able to move on and enter the Pre-Crime unit to
find his own minority report (Bakewell 103). But why does she make this suggestion?
In 2054, everywhere in Washington, D.C. retina scans are performed to identify people. This makes it impossible for Anderton to enter the Pre-Crime unit
because he would already have been detected on his way to the building. Therefore, he decides to have the suggested eye operation (Bakewell 103).
The eye surgery is undertaken by the surgeon and former criminal Dr. Eddie,
who had been arrested by Anderton some years before (Friedman). Still, Anderton
depends on him because there is no other way “to pass undetected through the
ubiquitous retinal scans” (Friedman) than removing his own eyeballs. According
to Bakewell, the eye operation itself means a change of identity for Anderton. He
changes from a police officer and much respected authority in the beginning to an
inferior position because of his eyes. Anderton becomes “Mr. Yakamoto” and as
an Asian he belongs to a minority group in Washington, D.C. (Bakewell 106;
Friedman). The change of his identity is permanent, because the identity, as said
before, depends on the eyes. Anderton’s social rank is now lowered and he will
never again become the John Anderton he has been before. Therefore, I would
argue, his whole perspective changes and he sees his society and Pre-Crime in a
completely new way. Or, as Friedman writes:
Though he survives, Anderton never looks at the world in the same way:
the veil of certainty which surrounded his faith in the Pre-Cogs has been
ripped away, replaced by a tattered and uncertain cloth which reveals the
world as a more ambiguous and less trustworthy place.
Through his new eyes Anderton is finally able to find the solution to his problem
and, related to this, he also learns about the weaknesses of the Pre-Crime system.
He is able to enter the Pre-Crime headquarters and the Temple where he finds
Agatha. Realizing that he has no minority report, Anderton panics and holds on to
Agatha. He finally finds Leo Crow and for the first time his faith in Pre-Crime is
shattered because he notices a failure of accuracy in the prediction. Anderton
learns that Pre-Crime cops only get one fixed point of view and that what is really
happening could be understood in completely different ways if seen from a different angle (Friedman). Furthermore, he recognizes that the Pre-cogs’ individual
visions of a future event are edited to produce one coherent vision of the event.
This edited version is the one the Pre-Crime cops see. In this moment, he understands that all he did in his time as a Pre-Crime cop was to invent future crimes.
Therefore, “functioning eyes” do not always “guarantee … understanding”
and insight (Bakewell 103). Anderton learns that the future is not predestined but
Stefanie Schwarz
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that one can always choose. Thus, when he is about to kill Leo Crow he decides
not to do so (Friedman). His temporary blindness, caused by the operation, has
served to open his eyes. He gets a deeper insight and begins to understand why
Pre-Crime is not the best solution for fighting high crime rates. In this context,
Anderton really has to go blind in order to see (Friedman).
It Is all a Matter of Interpretation
Vision always depends on interpretation. Pictures themselves can only show what
things look like but what they really are like is a matter of interpreting the images.
Therefore, it always depends on the person who interprets and evaluates the images and not only on the person who provides the visions. Friedman states:
[T]he Pre-Cogs function as authors – or at least transmitters or channellers
– of the text, the images as the physical text itself and Anderton as its
reader, the one called upon to fashion the disjointed images into a coherent
story, identify the scene and prevent the crime. (Friedman)
There are many scenes in Minority Report in which what John Anderton actually
sees is not shown very clearly. Mostly this lack of clear vision appears when Anderton is standing in front of the board in his office and interprets the bits and
pieces of pictures he receives from the Pre-Cogs. While watching Anderton shuffling the images on the translucent board, the spectator is also able to see what is
behind the board. Therefore, Anderton, too, can always see what is behind the
board and what is on the board at the same time. Images are overlapping and it
becomes basically impossible to focus entirely on just one impression.
Furthermore, the spectator receives a good view of Anderton’s position in
these scenes. Shown from various camera angles, he is standing in front of visual
fragments and has to solve a puzzle but is in fact seen through a screen of confusing images – fragments he actually receives and sees. All of the cases he is solving
are not really depending on facts. Their solution is always connected to Anderton’s point of view. In this case it applies that “we inevitably see what we have
been trained to understand and, sometimes, what we want to see” (Friedman). No
one will ever know if the Pre-Crime cops interpret the pictures right because no
one really knows if the future would have happened just as the Pre-Crime cops see
it. Clearly Pre-Crime workers have eyes, but are they really able to see the meaning
of the images?
Friedman points out that the best example for a “misinterpretation” is the case
of Anderton himself. The Crow murder shows that the cops always just see the
worst-case scenario. They come up with absolute horror stories but they do not
include “alternative visions” (Friedman). Furthermore, they are actually trained to
ignore certain things, for example “echoes,” which are supposed to be just a repetition of earlier visions (Bakewell 110). In reality, however, there can actually be
149
two murders which just look alike but are not the same. Here the seeing persons
are left in the dark. They just do not make use of their eyes but depend on what
they are told by the authorities. As a result, they are basically blind because they
simply rely on what others say and do not take a closer look at things or question
them (103).
Furthermore, the Pre-Crime cops and the Pre-Cogs are not cooperating. In the
movie, the workers never enter the Temple where the Pre-Cogs are. This further
strengthens the idea that there is much room for “misinterpretations” (Friedman).
Solutions are not drawn together with the Pre-Cogs, who provide the images, but
only by the cops.
Minority Report clearly shows that the interpretation of visual material is precarious and that it can easily lead to false conclusions (Bakewell 111). “Sight is
power” as it can be used to improve knowledge but power is limited (102). Therefore, sight is limited too. The ones who are seeing may not have the necessary
insight blind people have (103). Therefore, blindness can be an advantage. Vision
and interpretation have to be seen as two separate components and eyes are just
the mediators that connect them.
Anderton is the best example to understand that sight and interpretation may
not be linked as easily as one would think. He does not understand the failure of
the Pre-Crime system until he has a new perspective through new eyes and becomes himself a victim of the system (106). He has to lose sight before he can
discover that Pre-Crime is not impeccable and may not be the best solution in
order to prevent crime. Furthermore, he learns that future visions may not always
come true, because one can always have a choice (Friedman).
The use of the eye-motif makes way for various interpretations. Clearly the vision and the eye-motif are of great importance for Minority Report but there is more
to it than one might think. It serves as a warning of total state control and inspection (Friedman). Furthermore, the eye-motif hints to the question of predestination. Can the future really be predestined if there are cops who stop a future murder which will never happen in the end (Friedman)?
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Works Cited
Bakewell, Geoff. “The One-Eyed Man is King: Oedipal Vision in Minority Report.”
Arethusa 41.1 (2008): 95-111. Print.
Friedman, Lester D. “Minority Report: A Dystopic Vision.” Senses of Cinema 27 (Jul.-Aug.
2003): n. pag. Web. 19 Mar. 2009. <http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents
/03/27/minority_report.html>.
Minority Report. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Tom Cruise, Collin Farrell, Samantha Morton. Twentieth Century Fox and DreamWorks. 2002. DVD.
Solveig Burfeind
Becky Driscoll as femme fatale?
Elements of film noir in Don Siegel’s
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which depicts a small town community that is invaded by an extraterrestrial force, is usually regarded as a classical
science fiction film. Moreover, popular readings of the film suggest that it reflects
the Cold War paranoia of its time: the fear that communists, represented in the
movie by the Body Snatchers, would infiltrate the American society and turn
Americans into communists, or emotionless pod people as they are called in the
film.
But there are other readings of the film that at first glance seem less obvious.
Steven Sanders, for example, perceives Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a film noir.
This interpretation is especially interesting because the movie is said to belong to
the genre of science fiction. How does Sanders arrive at this conclusion? What
features of film noir can be found in the movie? Narrowing down the scope of the
film noir elements in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in the following chapter I will
focus on the leading female protagonist, Becky Driscoll, and in how far she can be
seen as a femme fatale, one of the most popular features of film noir. I will set Becky
in contrast to the conservative role model of American women in the 1950s and
point out various aspects of her character that make her a film noir’s femme fatale.
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Solveig Burfeind
The United States in the 1950s – the time period in which the film is set –
were on the one hand influenced by economic prosperity as an outcome of World
War II and on the other hand by the constant threat of the Cold War. Regarding
the private life of the Americans the “decade came to seem a time of pervasive
affluence and consumerism, of cheap gasoline and big cars, of new suburban
homes and family togetherness, of conservatism and conformity” (Boyer 844).
This emphasis on conservative values already indicates that her “suburban home”
and family defined the role of the woman. During World War II many women
were important work forces at the home front while their husbands fought in the
war. After the war however, these women were supposed to return to domesticity,
housekeeping and family. This idea was also promoted in the media. According to
Paul S. Boyer “[p]opular culture … glorified marriage and parenthood more than
ever before” and “television invariably pictured women as at-home mothers”
(861). But the perfect housewife shown on television also had its counterpart in
Hollywood movies, as Susan George points out. She claims that “besides doing its
part to promote the ‘proper’ role for women in the public and private spheres,
1950s Hollywood also produced cautionary tales regarding what could happen if
female sexuality and ambition were not contained” (3).
In contrast to the positive, happy family life portrayed by American pop culture, the experiences of World War II and the constant threat of the Cold War
were reflected in the genre of film noir. Roger Westcombe notes that “America’s
movies were growing darker” (3, emphasis in the original) as a result of its “dark”
experiences with war. Especially the visual effects reflect the “desperation and
hopelessness” (“Film Noir”) of real life with its play with shadows and darkness.
This can already be seen in the French term noir meaning ‘black’ or ‘dark’ as opposed to ‘light’. Filmic elements such as “low-key lighting” and “chiaroscuro effects” (Horsley 1), meaning the contrast between light and dark, are important in
this respect.
Apart from these devices, the genre also depicted certain themes and character
constellations. The main protagonist or “noir hero” often had to realize that
things were completely different from what they appeared to be and had to deal
with the consequences (Horsley 2). Another important character of the film noir is
the femme fatale. Femme fatale is a term frequently used to describe a certain type of
woman.
This woman is usually extraordinarily beautiful and an object of desire for
many men. But she can also become a dangerous seductress, or “a siren-like figure
of desire whose distinctive characteristics, compared to previous female archetypes, were her independence, strength and ruthless desire” as Roger Westcombe
phrases it (4). Famous examples of classical noir actors that come to mind are
Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner as femme fatales and Humphrey
Bogart and Dick Powell as the noir heroes. More recent examples of noir characters
could be Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and the newest Batman movies by Christopher Nolan with Christian Bale as the dark superhero.
Elements of film noir in Invasion of the Body Snatchers
153
The femme fatale of the film noir was to seduce the hero, often with dangerous
consequences for him. The cinematic journal Images compares the character to
“black widows who slowly drew in the heroes with come-hither looks and breathless voices … the femme fatale knew how to use men to get whatever she wanted”
(“Film Noir”). The depiction of the femme fatale can also be seen as a reaction of
male anxieties towards emancipated working women. The fact that many men
who returned home after World War II found their wives working and independent created a “new male anxiety” and as a result the image of the femme fatale
(Westcombe 4). Her characteristics, the independent and sexually emancipated
identity, were opposite to those of the traditional, loving housewife.
How are these noir aspects visible in Invasion of the Body Snatchers? As mentioned
earlier, Steven Sanders reads the movie as a film noir and presents different elements of the film to support his thesis: “Its flashback structure with voice-over
narration, unusually angled shots, scenes of claustrophobic darkness, crisply rendered dialogue, and a sense of sinister purpose and impending doom” (55). This
sense of “impending doom” is reflected in the film’s storyline, dealing with the
invasion of extraterrestrial forces, called pod people, which take over the form of
human beings turning them into emotionally dead creatures.
In an important scene of the movie, the main protagonist, Miles Bennell, discovers four pods that are coming to life in his greenhouse; the room is dark and
seems claustrophobic. In addition to this, the camera angle is estranging, showing
the whole scene from an upper corner of the room. Moreover, Miles himself has
features of the noir hero: On the one hand, Miles realizes that things are different
from what they seem. He finds out that many people in his town have been
turned into pod persons. On the other hand, his character development is similar
to that of the noir hero, who changes from a self confident, respected doctor to a
haunted person, full of anxiety: “the movement of the protagonist from one role
to another constitutes key structural elements in noir narrative” (Horsley 1). In the
final scene of the movie, Miles has escaped the pod people but finds himself in a
mental hospital and his rapid speech and body language indicate his deep fear and
confusion.
When looking at the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a film with classical
noir elements and Miles as a potential noir hero, it only seems logical that his female counterpart Becky Driscoll represents a femme fatale. The first time she appears in the movie, Becky is wearing a pretty dress and her hair and make up are
carefully done. She is a beautiful, attractive woman and it does not take long for
her and Miles to refresh their old romantic feelings for each other. Becky’s looks
can be compared to that of a classical noir femme fatale, the curly hairdo, shaped
eyebrows and a make up that accentuates her seductive eyes and sensuous lips.
Apart from her appearance, the fact that she was recently divorced is equally important. The 1950s ideal of a woman was a married mother, a housewife. Contrasting this ideal, Becky’s marriage has failed, and she does not have any children.
Having been married also implies that she is sexually experienced. Katrina Mann
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Solveig Burfeind
points out that “Becky’s divorce culturally resonated as evidence of her unrestrained sexuality. The female divorcee … was presumed to be more sexually
available than unmarried women … [and] had increased awareness of herself and
her desires” (60). Moreover, a sexually emancipated woman was seen as a danger
to society by attracting and seducing men, thus representing the opposite of the
traditional housewife: “Writers … were warning that female desire and sexuality, if
not properly contained, could distract men, destroy families and make the nation
weak and ripe for Communist infiltration” (George 2). In the movie, Becky eventually turns into a pod person and through this transformation she becomes a
danger to Miles’ life, like the femme fatale to the noir hero.
The first scene in which Becky appears is set at Miles’ office. As soon as she
enters the room, a light, seductive music sets in and her soft voice seems to resemble the tone of the music. She is wearing a pretty dress that shows her bare
shoulders and, as already mentioned, her hair is done and she wears make up and
jewelry. Her face is illuminated and highlighted by a spotlight. We see Becky in an
over-the-shoulder shot from Miles perspective and it is obvious that he is stunned
by her appearance, smiling at her and joking. He closes the door behind her as if
he was seeking intimacy. A mutual attraction becomes obvious to the viewer as
Becky seems flirtatious with Miles. When she sits down to talk to Miles we see her
from a bird’s eye perspective, she is looking up at Miles and especially her eyes
seem very large and sensual. At the same time she is giving the impression of a
self-confident woman. In this scene, Becky clearly shows attributes of the femme
fatale, being beautiful and seductive, attracting Miles.
Farther into the movie, Becky is cooking breakfast in Miles’ kitchen, after he
had rescued her the night before from being transformed into a pod person. At
the beginning of the scene the soft, seductive music sets in again. The fact that
Becky stands in the kitchen cooking for Miles might imply that she does have
traditional housewife qualities. But Becky’s clothes speak a different language. She
is wearing a large man’s shirt and jeans, the opposite of what one would expect
from a 1950s housewife. These clothes make her look like an emancipated
woman, another feature of the femme fatale. Miles seems very much in love with
her, dedicated to please. When she asks him how he likes his eggs, he says that he
wants them the same way she makes hers. He also makes remarks about how he
liked to rescue and take her home in the middle of the night. Becky on the other
hand seems more rational and in charge of the situation.
In another scene at the office, Miles hides with Becky from the pod people,
which had been trying to find and transform them. Miles and Becky decide that
they need to stay awake the whole night in order to withstand a transformation
into a pod person while sleeping. Before the camera fades out, the two kiss passionately, and music is playing in the background. Katrina Mann observes that the
next picture, which shows the scene in the morning, displays a full ashtray, which
she interprets as a “postcoital commemoration with a macabre twist” (61). Taking
this as an indicator for a sexual encounter between Miles and Becky it can be as-
155
sumed that Becky got what she wanted. She succeeded in seducing Miles. After
this it does not take long for her to be turned into a pod person, endangering
Miles’ life, like the femme fatale endangers that of the noir hero.
Later in the scene, the music becomes more dramatic and the room seems
somewhat claustrophobic, because of the dark shadows that were not there in the
first office scene; these are clearly elements of film noir. Miles is trying to think of a
way to battle their persecutors and he takes two knives from a cabinet: “No. It
wouldn’t work. I might get one or even two, but I couldn’t get three.” And Becky
replies: “You’re forgetting something, darling – me. It isn’t three against one. It’s
three against two. Give me a knife.” Miles presumes that he has to fight the pod
people by himself and that Becky, being a woman, is not capable of this. She on
the other hand appears to be very strong and self-confident when she tells him
that she can fight, too. She takes his hand with the knives in it with a strong and
determined grip. She “takes action,” which, according to Westcombe, is another
distinctive feature of the femme fatale, who “is not passive … she takes action to get
what – and whom – she wants with a directness and aggression previously reserved for male players” (4).
One of the last but probably most crucial scenes is where Becky is being transformed into a pod person. She and Miles have run from their persecutors, the pod
people, and hide in a cave. Miles leaves Becky alone for a moment to find help
and when he comes back he discovers that she has fallen asleep. He takes her into
his arms and kisses her passionately. In this moment, dramatic music sets in and
we see a close up of Becky’s face. When she does not kiss Miles back with the
same passion he realizes that she has been transformed during his absence. Becky
opens her eyes and stares at him coolly, her hair is messed up and her face covered in dirt. She lifts one of her eyebrows in an almost cynical way. She appears
wild and dangerous with her white teeth clenching, almost animal-like. This shot is
followed by a close-up of Miles’ horrified face. It is obvious that the beautiful,
flirtatious Becky that he fell in love with is completely and irreversibly gone and he
is shocked. When he starts to run from her, Becky calls out for the other pod
people to get him.
In his voice-over, Miles states that he has never been so afraid in his whole
life. Becky has become his ultimate threat: “I didn’t know the real meaning of fear
… until I had kissed Becky. A moment’s sleep, and the girl I loved … was an
inhuman enemy bent on my destruction. That moment’s sleep was death to
Becky’s soul.” In this scene, Becky can again be perceived as a femme fatale, because
she betrays and endangers Miles by shouting out for the pod people to get him.
Although her appearance has changed from the beautiful and carefully styled
woman she was in the beginning of the movie to a dirty, scary face she still fits the
image of the femme fatale.
Susan George writes in her essay on the “Science Fiction Vamp,” where she
compares the former to the femme fatale, that stories about this kind of seductive
and dangerous woman serve “as a cautionary tale for the unsuspecting men they
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Solveig Burfeind
may seduce and as a warning to women to stay in their place or they will, literally,
turn monstrous and be dispatched without mercy” (14). Becky, too, has turned
truly “evil” and she even appears somewhat “monstrous” with her widely opened
eyes and clenched teeth. Moreover, it can be argued that she is a seductress because of her attractive appearance and the fact that it did not take long for Miles
to fall for her. When Becky has become a pod person, her body is still alive but
Miles realizes that her soul is dead. “Death was usually the fate of the SF Vamp”
(George 3) and the same could be said for the femme fatale. One might argue that
Becky in the end does not resemble a femme fatale anymore, because she is a pod
person without emotions or sexual desires. On the other hand, Becky’s transformation can also be perceived as a final act to “pull the hero down” (“Film Noir”).
At the same time Becky succumbs to the fate of the femme fatale, because her “soul
dies” (“Film Noir”).
In conclusion, Becky shows various features of the femme fatale. According to
Richard Westcombe, the three “key components” of the femme fatale are her “independence”, “strength” and “ruthless desire” (4). All three components can – to a
certain extend – be found in the character of Becky. She is divorced from her
husband, no longer depending upon him. She shows self-confidence and strength,
and insists on taking up a fight against the pod people. She shows desire when she
flirts and kisses Miles. She also stands in contrast to the traditional role model of
American women in the 1950s.
Yet Becky does not give a fully homogenous picture of the femme fatale. In the
second office scene, right before she tells Miles that she can fight the pod people,
too, she breaks down crying and telling him that she does not want to live in a
world where there is no love, a world where there are only emotionless pod people, and that she wants to have Miles’ children. This seems contradictory to an
independent and dangerous femme fatale and it shows that Becky’s character has
further components than mentioned in this chapter, e.g. the longing for love and
children. But when looking at the 1950s Italian movie poster of Invasion of the Body
Snatchers the image of Becky as a femme fatale is somewhat taken to an extreme,
showing her tanned and naked, voluptuous lips and breasts, her hands seem like
sharp claws – a truly wild and dangerous femme fatale. In my opinion, it is this impression of Becky that lasts because this is what her character has become at the
end of the film, and though the picture of her as a femme fatale is not fully homogenous, it can be concluded that Becky does more than just sharing certain
characteristics with the film noir’s dark heroine, the femme fatale.
Works Cited
Boyer, Paul S., et al. The Enduring Vision. Boston: Houghton, 2004. Print.
“Film Noir: An Introduction.” Images Journal 2 (25 Feb. 2004): n. pag. Web. 3 Jul.
2009. <http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/infocus/filmnoir.htm>.
George, Susan A. “Pushing Containment: The Tale of the 1950s Science Fiction
Vamp.” Reconstruction 5.4 (Fall 2005): n. pag. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. <http:// reconstruction.eserver.org/054/george.shtml>.
Horsley, Lee. “Definitions of Film Noir.” Crimeculture.com. 2002. Web. 28 Apr.
2009. <http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/FilmNoir.html>.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Perf. Kevin McCarthy and Dana
Wynter. 1956. Walter Wanger Productions, 1998. DVD.
Mann, Katrina. “‘You’re Next!’: Postwar Hegemony Besieged in Invasion of the Body
Snatchers.” Cinema Journal 44.1 (Fall 2004): 49-68. Print.
Sanders, Steven M. “Picturing Paranoia: Interpreting Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film. Ed. Steven M. Sanders. Lexington, KY: U
of Kentucky P, 2008. 55-72. Print.
Westcombe, Roger. “What is this thing called film noir, anyway?” Crimeculture.com.
2003. Web. 28 Apr. 2009. <http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/RW
ThingCalledNoir.html>.
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Part IV
(De)Constructing Bodies and Identities
Benjamin Ryan Ulonska
Human Monsters:
The Function of the Horror Motif in Don Siegel’s
Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Its Remakes
In retrospect, it’s usually pretty easy to look
at horror movies and see the influences of the time.
– Wes Craven, director
As director Wes Craven states, films – and horror movies in particular – reflect
contemporary socio-cultural events by commenting on the political climate of
certain decades. Quite often, the horror story relies on gloomy atmospheres, underlined by distracting images of fear and terror, and features the confrontation of
the hero with the ultimate evil that takes shape in devilish figures such as Michael
Myers, Freddy Krueger or the Alien. In any case, the evil force embodies a dangerous threat to human life as it wants to mercilessly eliminate those who are good
at heart.
It is exactly that aspect of menace which draws a connection between the horror and the science fiction genre. The representation of a threatened society in a –
most often – dystopian world is a classical aspect of twentieth-century science
fiction literature and can be found in Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers (1954) and
162
Richard Matheson’s I am Legend (1954) as well as in their cinematic adaptations
and remakes. Thus, the question arises whether there exists something like a metagenre of both Horror and science fiction, and if that is the case: How can it be
identified and what are its key aspects?
In this chapter, I will discuss these questions by focusing on the cinematic construction of the alien-invaded human body in two film versions of Jack Finney’s
novel The Body Snatchers. Therefore, I will give a definition of the horror genre
before I make a distinction between horrific elements and elements of terror.
Following, I will briefly summarize the plot and give some basic information
about the first Body Snatcher film by Don Siegel and its three remakes. Thereafter, I
will elaborate on the different socio-cultural backgrounds of each film and place
the horrifying corporal construction of snatched bodies in context to the contemporary influences of their time. To conclude, I will briefly summarize the crucial
points of my research and point out the overall function of SciFi-horror films as
medium that is critical of society.
Playing with Fears: The SciFi-Horror Genre
In order to argue that the genre boundaries of films such as Invasion of the Body
Snatchers are fairly ambiguous and that Science Fiction movies can under certain
circumstances be regarded as horror films as well, I will briefly outline some genre
specifications: The term “horror” is derived from the Latin “horreo,” which
means “shudder at” or “bristle” (“Horror”). In order to create a frightening effect,
horror fiction communicates the emotion of fear by making use of horrific and
terrifying elements. As Georg Seeßlen and Fernand Jung write in Horror: Geschichte
und Mythologie des Horrorfilms, the Gothic Novel originated the horror movie:
Das moderne Horror-Genre im Film und in der Literatur verdankt seine
Thematik und seine Ornamentik vor allem drei Quellen: Das ist der klassische Schauerroman als spezielle Form der Gothic Novels, das ist der Vampirroman mit den Verarbeitungen seines Motivs in Vers-Epen und in der Lyrik, und das sind die Gespenstergeschichten und ihre Vorformen im
Drama. (49-50)
Thus, horror fiction plays with shudder and thrill and takes up myths of horrific as
well as of scientific character which can be presented in either horrid or terrifying
ways – and it is useful to make a distinction between horror and terror at this
point because, according to Devendra Varma, the difference lies within the recipient’s “awful apprehension and sickening realization” (Varma qtd. in Cavallaro 3) –
with the term horror implying an instantaneous shock and the term terror meaning the process of building up emotional anticipation for what is seen. Thereby,
the “awful” is most often fantasized as a monster. But what exactly is a monster?
The Function of the Horror Motif
163
Primarily, there are six types of monsters: the artificial human, the creature, the
undead, the animal, the doppelgänger and the witch (Seeßlen and Jung 46-48). All
Body Snatcher movies contain such images of monsters – in the 1993 version for
example, the snatched mother is not only the creature but also becomes the witch
(Brenez 94-96). Despite the fact that these implementations might be mistaken for
typical characteristics of horror films, Fred Botting manifests that “[t]he conjunction of two hybrid genres composed from diverse literary and mythical precursors
breeds monstrosities: strange beings and disturbing other” (111). In Invasion of the
Body Snatchers, the “alien” is of course the strange being as it resembles an unknown species that wants to invade humans. Thus we can say it is a monstrosity, a
creature threatening human life.
With regard to the Body Snatchers and its remakes, Botting’s definition is just as
easily applicable as Sobchack’s: In all remakes, the alien liquid snatching human
bodies comes from outer space. Sobchack even defines the Sci-Fi-Horror genre as
a “Monster or Creature film” in her book Screening Space. According to Sobchack,
the horror film is primarily concerned with the individual in conflict with
society or with some extension of himself, the SF film with society and its
institutions in conflict with each other or with some alien other. … There
are … frequent cases of congruence between the SF and the horror film;
there are films in which it is not so easy to distinguish whether the chaos is
moral or civil. … The films … are what we commonly call the Monster or
Creature film. (29-30)
Sobchack then continues that those science fiction monsters either fell from
outer space to threaten the planet, or they invaded or destroyed it (29).
The Corporeality of the Alien
Just like horror, the term corporeality is also of Latin origin (Lat. corporalis) and
means “relating to or being characteristic of a person’s body” (Hawker, Soanes
and Spooner 191). Thus it is used in a physical rather than spiritual way. Hence, I
will observe the physical appearance, the corpus of the alien, and, moreover, the
alien-invaded human body according to features that can be interpreted as metaphors for contemporary societal issues. It is important to accomplish this analysis
in two parts, since the alien semen or alien liquid and the alien-invaded body are
different from each other in their function. From now on, I will use the terms
alien, monster or creature interchangeably to describe the bodily version of a
snatched human. On the other hand, the term alien source will stand for the shape
of the outer-space alien.
Aliens demonstrate what is not human, the better to exemplify that which
is human. Difference and otherness are the essence of aliens … for only
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then can they stiffen the sense of self and self-defence that completes the
chain of science fiction as a normative genre. (Sardar 6)
Ziauddin Sardar’s definition of the alien’s otherness comes close to psychological
theory about the categorization process of the human mind. Therein it is said that
humans categorize everything they fear as “strange” and “unknown.” Thus it is
interesting to observe the alien in Body Snatchers on two levels: the corporeal construction according to applied features of societal fear and the reception of the
creature as “the other” (Zimbardo 137).
The Body Snatchers
Perhaps we can say that the title of the first Body Snatcher film called Invasion of the
Body Snatchers (1956) exactly mirrors what had happened ever since the story based
on Jack Finney’s novel was first turned into a movie: it has prepared the ground
for a worldwide invasion of Body Snatcher films. These primarily tell the story of an
alien invasion on earth and the simultaneous equalization of humans.
Whereas the 1956 version (directed by Don Siegel) is still a black and white
movie set in an idyllic small town, an anti-communist area underlining the danger
brought to society in shape of colossal outer space semen, the cinematographic
composition of the 1978 version appears much darker. Director Philip Kaufman
not only gave a blunt and merciless portrayal of post-Vietnam War society, he also
hit the ravages of time.1 With its gloomy atmosphere and the permanent presence
of a terrifying yet elusive alien power, Invasion of the Body Snatchers follows the typical sort of late 1970s mystery thrillers.2 Especially the unexpected ending contains
one overall message: don’t trust any BODY. Another 15 years later, right after the
Gulf War, Abel Ferrara directed another version of the story set in a military base.
The movie seems to be a combination of both previous movies, as it takes up
numerous elements (such as familiar lines or characters) from its predecessors.
Moreover, we notice a certain similarity in the scene structure, which is a typical
characteristic for a Body Snatcher film; one that can also be found in the 2007 adaptation by Oliver Hirschbiegel. His The Invasion is the latest remake of Siegel’s film.
Although certain scenes3 recall earlier versions, the theme of “sleeping” has a
1
2
3
The film, for example, stars Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy – all of
them famos actors in the 1970s.
Another example is Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (1977), which is set in Australia and takes up
Indigenous Australian themes. It is quite interesting to compare the audio-visual storytelling
techniques used in both films as there are similar motifs such as a pulse beating that only the
viewer is able to hear.
See, for example, the scene in which Tucker Kaufman tries to convince his former wife Carol
Bennell of the beauty that lies within being snatched.
165
whole different meaning after the events of September 11.4 Also, the atmosphere
conveyed in this movie has changed into a terrifying one: whereas Kaufman and
Ferrara both strongly implemented uncanny elements in their works, Hirschbiegel
almost went back to the roots of the 1956 Body Snatchers, as his movie focuses on
terrifying components rather than horrific ones.
Thus we can say that when considering the film’s release years it seems as if
almost each decade has its own Snatcher movie that reviews contemporary sociocultural issues and comments on the fears of society by encoding them into metaphors of communism (1950s), war (1970s) and terrorism (2000s). These metaphors, as I will argue, are not only psychologically manifested in the characters of
the films but also in their outer appearance. The corporeality of the snatched body
is the visualization of a whole generation’s fear projected on the other, the alien.
Furthermore, the altered bodies also hint at a popular feature of the science fiction
genre, which is the implementation of horrific elements such as the monster or
the alien. If these films include horrific elements, to what extent, then, is it possible to strictly distinguish between horror and science fiction movie? Looking at
different examples such as Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985) or David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), we clearly see that there is something like a meta-genre to be
called SciFi-Horror.5
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
When the first Body Snatcher movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, was released in
1956, the United States was facing a problem that had occurred after the end of
World War II: the Cold War. During this period, the Soviet Union opposed the
United States (and their Western allies). The tension between them was expressed
through a high level of espionage, invasions, technological competition and above
all the space race. The intensity of the conflict and its medial representation can be
interpreted as making a boogeyman out of the Communist, who became the fear
of a whole generation.
Regarding Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the alien serves as a stand-in for
this fear. It presents the perfect boogeyman of the Communist, already in its outer
appearance. The first time we see the snatched creature in Siegel’s film, it is lying
motionless on a pool table. The leading characters Miles Bennell and Betty Driscoll have been called to the Belicec’s house where Jack and Teddy are already
waiting outside. They invite them in and Jack talks to Miles and Betty in a secre4
5
In all of the Body Snatcher versions, humans are snatched while they are asleep, thus the “sleeping” becomes one of the films’ key motifs. On the other hand, after the events of September 11,
2001, terrorists leading their everyday life in the United States society became known as “sleepers” – they invade society from within without being recognized.
A definition hereof has previously been given according to Vivian Sobchak, author of Screening
Space.
166
tive manner, not revealing what the point of their invitation is. Inside the house,
Jack tells Miles to walk over to the pool table. The atmosphere is gloomy, as only
parts of the bar room are lighted. The pool table in the foreground is completely
shady. Miles walks over and switches on the ceiling light. His body is silhouetted
against the wall. Something indefinable is lying on the table, covered with a blanket that makes it look like a body bag. Miles is shocked when he discovers a body
below. Being a doctor, he examines it, and then asks Jack who the man was. The
cuckoo clock counts down scaring Betty, who moves over to Miles quickly. She
glances at the supposedly dead body and remarks that its facial expression is
“vague.” Jack adds that it looks like “the first impressions of a stamp on a coin” –
it is not finished. Miles, taking a closer look at the body, finds out that even
though facial features are given, the details and lines characteristic for a human
face are missing. The group discusses whether the body might be a human corpse
or not. Then Miles asks for an ink-pad to take the body’s fingerprints. Just like the
unfinished face, they are characterless, blank. Teddy wonders whose body replica
it might be. The four of them go to the bar and discuss it. Teddy remarks that it
has Jack’s height and weight, which surprises her husband so much that he injures
himself in this moment of shock. Miles wonders whether there might be some
connection between Jack and the body. A short time later, he and Becky leave.
Teddy and Jack stay at their place. When Jack falls asleep for a moment, Teddy
examines the corpse again and recognizes that it has a wound at the same spot
where Jack hurt himself. She wakes her husband in fright and both of them hurry
to Miles’s place.
In this sequence, both characters and audience are confronted with the alien
during its growth. We neither know where it came from nor have we seen the
alien source before. However, the corpus is presented to us through the descriptions the characters give. Even though we barely get a glimpse of it, an exact idea
of what it must look like is manifested on our mind: the creature under the blanket looks like a dead man. It is motionless, has vague facial expressions, and lacks
details and lines. It appears to be unfinished and characterless. Later in that sequence, when we briefly see the creature’s face in a close up shot, we clearly notice
the lack of detail: the emotionless facial features strengthen the impression that it
must be dead. This image of death and its hiding under the body bag-like blanket
which indicates the deadness triggers the reception of the alien as a monstrous
being: Not only is it an unknown creature and thereby according to Sardar identifiable as alien (because it is different from the other characters who are alive, have
mimics, features and emotions which are recognizable through the lines on their
faces), but it can also be regarded as the monster since we are presented with
Jack’s doppelgänger, his motionless replica which disturbs the characters because
of its strange otherness. And at this point it must be mentioned that the dead
body is not the frightening aspect but rather its features which remind the characters of Jack.
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Moreover, the discourse on the Cold War conflict and the fear of Communist
invasion contemporaneous to the film’s release is metaphorically manifested in the
alien’s outer appearance. It is described as characterless and blank yet as still looking human. This picture conveys the idea of the perfect spy as a neutral figure, a
blunt instrument and anonymous person who simply functions for the state. The
spy’s task was to gain information from the opponent in order to foster the
Communist regime. Thus, he worked undercover and apparently became friends
with the political “enemy” to transmit secret information (cf. Quiring).
In Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this picture of the undercover spy is deployed several times. It is most explicitly used in the medical office scene when
Jack’s doppelgänger takes advantage of the friendship with Miles in order to convert him to the league of aliens. To quote a famous line from the movie, Jack
“looks the same but he has changed – his emotions have changed,” as Miles and
Betty agree. Jack’s alien-invaded body tries to invade Miles’s thoughts in preparation for a bodily invasion. Thereby the doppelgänger wants to prepare the ground
for a societal change, since the aliens distinguish themselves from humans by their
lack of emotions.
This idea of a hierarchical system in which the participants work as they have
been ordered – the famous Saturday morning street scene viewed from Miles’s
office in which the snatched people unpack new pods from trucks to further the
snatching in town – very much reminds viewers of the principles of Communism:
Individuality is lost due to the fact that all people are forcibly equated. Thus, the
missing fingerprints of the alien body in the encounter sequence at the Belicec’s
house are a beautifully encoded example of this contemporary US American fear:
The fear of losing what makes people unique, being invaded and becoming a
Communist by force. Regarding the socio-cultural background of the United
States during the Cold War, this image of Communist invasion is the horrifying
part of Siegel’s film, as it becomes obvious in the above mentioned scenes in
Miles’s office and Jack’s house.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Twenty-two years later, the Cold War was still continuing and the United States
was still facing a Communist opponent. But times had changed: The United States
had won the space race with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first men
on the moon. On the other hand the shadow of the Vietnam War, which was
fought between 1959 and 1975, laid heavy on people’s minds. US American society tried to find its way back to normality and to get on with everyday life. Only
now they knew that technology had turned another direction: The chemical war-
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fare had reached a new dimension in the battles of Vietnam (Simkin). Defoliants,
also known as the Rainbow Herbicides (including Agent Orange, an herbicide that
had dioxin as a by-product in it) were used to fight the enemy. However, the use
of such chemicals had not just caused changes in the ecological system but also
the people residing in these areas – along the Ho-Chi-Minh trail – had been affected. The American society was now confronted with consequential issues of
guilt and fear and the return to daily routine was not as easy as expected (Monsterland).
In 1978, Philip Kaufman’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was released.
The film depicts exactly the situation of people trying to re-integrate into society.
The fear factor deployed in the movie, however, went through an alteration:
Whereas in Siegel’s film the horror motif basically rests on the idea of a Communist invasion, Kaufman establishes a more complex fear which functions on three
additional levels. Firstly, the power of the other: After the effects of the Vietnam
War, people were well aware that if their country was able to use chemical warfare,
other nations could do so, too, and the effects would probably be unpredictable.
Secondly, the ethic pitfalls of scientific progress: In 1971, surgeon Robert J. White
had been the first scientist to transplant the head of a monkey to another monkey’s body (cf. White et al.). There is a direct reference to that in the Body Snatchers
movie when a man-headed dog crosses the street. Thirdly, the ecological effects:
They had triggered a change in climate and poisoned food chains for example.
In order to point out how Kaufman produced two types of creatures in his
remake, the alien source and the alien corpus, which embody the disturbing other
in an even more horrifying way, I will now focus on the cocoon scene in the 1978
Body Snatcher movie. In this scene, the alien source tries to snatch Matthew Bennell
and his friends Elizabeth Driscoll, Jack and Nancy Bellicec. It produces their doppelgängers and feeds from their bodies while they are asleep.
Matthew, Elizabeth, Jack and Nancy are at Matthew’s place. It is late at night;
Elizabeth and Jack have fallen asleep. Nancy is still awake, whereas Matthew tries
to resist fatigue. While sitting outside in the front yard, however, he gets tired and
finally falls asleep. Now the alien source starts the snatching process by spreading
its roots across the yard towards Matthew. The string-like looking roots softly
entangle his hand and a giant seed pod, which is in the garden, starts moving. The
sound of a heartbeat can be heard. The pod opens up and pops out its fleshycolored petals. The deeper Matthew dreams, the faster it grows. The heartbeat
turns louder as the pod fully opens, revealing in its center a reddish, muscle-like,
slimy receptacle. The petals decay and eventually fall off. Disturbing sonar sounds
underline the growing of Matthew’s doppelgänger: the pod pops out a degenerated alien embryo covered in slime. The disproportioned body of the embryo is
gasping for air. It expels bird-like sounds as if it was calling for its mother. Two
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more pods grow their embryos. Matthew’s doppelgänger grows to his size: it now
appears to be the almost perfect replica since its hair and facial features are a copy
of the human original. The gasping for air gets heavier and the body starts twitching, trying to break free from the pod. The other embryos develop the features of
Elizabeth and Jack. Suddenly, Nancy stands on the porch calling for Matthew. He
wakes up and hurries inside. The twitching of his alien doppelgänger gets heavier
as if it was dying.
This sequence is a key moment in the movie as it shows the growing process
of the replica. At first, there is only the seed pod which later develops into a plant
and then literally gives birth to the alien. The alien and its source are therefore
connected not only with each other but also with their human host. However, the
growing process takes place on two levels, which differ in their depiction of the
horrific: the evolution of the alien source and the growth of the alien itself.
Whereas the alien source appears almost peacefully in the beginning, softly
spreading its tentacle-like roots to invade Matthew, the alien embryo is introduced
to the story at a point of unbearable tension. At first the pod seems to develop
only into a plant. There is nothing frightening about it, nothing scaring, just the
connotation of “nature’s beauty.” However, the image of an ordinary growing
process taking place is an illusion. As soon as we then notice the disturbing core
of the plant, an unpleasant feeling of terror sets in: we are unaware of what is
going to happen next. Following, the heart-like pistil and fleshy petals instigate a
feeling of disgust. Terror changes into horror after the embryo has popped out.
The process reminds the viewer of a delivery and thereby causes confusion and
repulsion when the plant disturbingly grows human look-alikes. Even worse than
that, evolution has taken another direction, a horrifying, disgusting one that even
foreshadows a dystopian world. The question now is which metaphors does the
sequence contain and how can they be interpreted?
On the one hand, we are presented with the horrifying image of the other
again: just as in the original version, the alien in Kaufman’s remake embodies the
dystopian vision of the Communist enemy, but the film’s focus is changed in so
far that the idea of a Communist invasion is not the most frightening point anymore. Rather, the vision of dystopia is intensified by the awareness of the Communist military power that became evident during the Vietnam War. Thus, the
corporeal construction of the alien in Kaufman’s remake is slightly different:
whereas the creature in Siegel’s film is monstrous because of its blank and motionless facial features, Kaufman’s alien is horrifying because it becomes a nearly
perfect replica of Matthew within short time, which indicates the opponent’s ability to strike back mercilessly.
The transformation process of Kaufman’s alien is quite fast and thereby also
hints at the rapidly changing society and its moral values. If the alien in the film is
able to quickly turn from a slimy, degenerated embryo into a human look-alike
while the humans are sleeping, changes might be happing in real-life without anyone noticing them. In this case, the transformation resembles the process of
170
changing directions in everyday life, whereas the sleeping character stands for the
ignorance of society – quite often we don’t see what is right in front of us because
we don’t question much. The fear of being ignorant is most of all illustrated in this
sequence by the use of extraordinary special effects such as the slimy surface of
the alien, its twitching moves and the bird-like cry.
On the other hand we must observe which meaning is conveyed by the idea of
a plant giving birth to an embryo. The use of defoliants in the Vietnam War had
left its marks: a functioning ecologic system had been widely damaged and in the
aftermath people were confronted with poisoned food chains, changed landscapes
and birth defects. Thus, the idea of the plant delivering an embryo signifies the
unpredictability of the effects caused by chemical warfare. The wide use of newly
developed scientifically enhanced products obfuscated the inexperience with longterm damages. Consequently, the deformed alien embryo metaphorically reflects
popular discourses on birth defects that occurred after the Vietnam War. Thus, we
can say the film warns against the careless use of new scientific products. Not only
the unpredictability of effects but also the possibility of the opponent using
chemicals in war, too, was a fear society had to deal with. Therefore, Kaufman’s
mise-en-scène in Body Snatchers is a remake which thoughtfully adjusted contemporary societal issues by reflecting a wider range of frightening aspects. However, the
message of Siegel’s film is still recognizable. Only the fear of the enemy invasion
has switched to a fear of the enemy’s powerful influence.
The Alien as a Mirror of Our Contemporary Time
This chapter has sought to discuss Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its remakes as a hybrid genre that mixes with certain Horror elements. Drawing on
Seeßlen, Sobchack and Varma, I argued that the corporeal construction of the
alien in the 1956 and 1978 versions reflects contemporary socio-cultural issues.
More precisely, the horrifying aspects could be identified as societal fears that are
metaphorically manifested in the outer appearance of the alien in the Body Snatcher
films. Yet in Kaufman’s version, the alien neither only mirrors the enemy stereotype nor simply resembles the fear of “the other” as it does in Don Siegel’s version. It functions as a socio-critical metaphor revealing similarities between the
self (in that case the civilian) and the other (the Communist enemy) who can adapt
to American culture, operate as a spy and make use of Western technologies
which, in turn, can be of inhuman impact.
The commentary function of the SciFi-Horror meta-genre hence plays a crucial part. If the cinematic enemy is a natural product – the plant delivering the
replica – and nature has been damaged by Western powers using new technologies
and chemicals, the conclusion would be that the enemy is a self-generated problem, similar to the proverb, “What goes around, comes around.” The Western
powers had started chemical warfare and by now the Communist enemy was able
171
to make use of it, too. When comparing Kaufman’s film to Ferrara’s remake, we
see that the tendency of portraying the enemy as a danger that strikes back from
within society has become more and more popular. In the 1993 version (Body
Snatchers, Dir. Abel Ferrara), the U.S. military falls victim to its own chemical inventions, whereas the 2007 version (The Invasion, Dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel) conveys
the image of terrorist sleepers (an ex-husband trying to persuade his wife to be
invaded). Thus, the critical aspect of the alien body in these movies lies in its reflection of society and the contemporaneous questions it raises, which are whether
or not the enemy – to a certain extent – was brought on by one’s own fault.
Films Cited
Body Snatchers. Dir. Abel Ferrara. Perf. Gabrielle Anwar, Terry Kinney, Forest
Whitaker. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1993. DVD.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Perf. Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter,
Larry Gates. Walter Wanger Productions, 1956. DVD.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Philip Kaufman. Perf. Donald Sutherland, Brooke
Adams, Jeff Goldblum. Solofilm, 1978. DVD.
Monsterland. Dir. Jörg Buttgereit. Perf. Rick Baker, John Carpenter, Kim Newman.
Avanti Media. 2009. DVD.
Re-Animator. Dir. Stuart Gordon. Perf. Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton. Empire Pictures, 1985. DVD.
The Fly. Dir. David Cronenberg. Perf. Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz.
Brooksfilms, 1986. DVD.
The Invasion. Dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy
Northam. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2007. DVD.
The Last Wave. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Richard Chamberlain, Olivia Hamnett, David
Gulpilil. The Australian Film Commission, 1977. DVD.
Works Cited
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Catherine, Alan Spooner, and Sara Hawker. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 191.
Print.
Maloney, Paul. Utopia and Dystopia: Visions of Alternative Societies. Berlin: Cornelsen,
2008. Print.
Botting, Fred. “‘Monsters of the Imagination’: Gothic, Science, Fiction.” A Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. David Seed. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
2008. 111-126. Print.
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Brenez, Nicole. “Die abscheuliche Vertrautheit der Familie. Body Snatchers von Abel
Ferrara.“ Unheimlich Anders: Doppelgänger, Monster, Schattenwesen im Kino. Ed. Christine Rüffert. Berlin: Bertz- und Fischer, 2004. 93-103. Print.
Chancellor, Henry. James Bond: The Man and His World. The Official Companion to Ian
Fleming’s Creation. London: John Murray, 2005. Print.
Cavallaro, Dani. The Gothic Vision: Three Centuries of Horror, Terror and Fear. New York:
Continuum, 2002. Print.
Finney, Jack. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 1954. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction,
1998. Print.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1982. Print.
Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. 1954. London: Orion Publishing Group, 1999. Print.
Quiring, Manfred. “Putin ehrt Star-Spion des Kalten Krieges.” Welt Online 4 Nov.
2007. Web. 17 Dec. 2010. <http://www.welt.de/politik/article1330155/Putin_
ehrt_Star_Spion_des_Kalten_Krieges.html>
Sardar, Ziauddin, and Sean Cubritt. “Introduction.” Aliens R US: The Other in Science
Fiction Cinema. London: Pluto P, 2002. Print.
Seeßlen, Georg, and Fernand Jung. “Typologie der Horror-Mythen.” Horror: Geschichte
und Mythologie des Horrorfilms. Marburg: Schüren, 2006. 44-57. Print.
Simkin, John. “Chemical Warfare.” Spartacus Educational. Spartacus Schoolnet, n.d.
Web. 15 Dec. 2010. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/VNchemical.htm>.
Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New York: Ungar.
1987. Print.
White, Robert J., et al. “Cephalic Exchange Transplantation in the Monkey.” Surgery
70.1 (July 1971): 135-39. Print.
Zimbardo, Philip. Psychologie. 1992. 5. Auflage. Berlin: Springer, 1995. Print.
Gina Ziebell
Why Does the One Only Exist in Cyberspace?
Obsolescence of the Body, Construction of a
Virtual Subject and the Question of Control
in The Matrix
Introduction: Why Identity Matters in Virtual Reality
Not so long ago, the future of the science fiction film was considered bleak by
some of the most important scholars in this area (Sobchack qtd. in Landon xxii).
Even cyberpunk, celebrated by some for its unprecedented engagement with
postmodern issues (Barnett 6; Landon xxiv) and seen critically by others (Bould
228), had lost much of its creativity. Barnett summarizes that cyberpunk works
had become “restrained, commercialized, and mimetic” (360) since, according to
Fredric Jameson, it had turned into “mere ‘realism’ and an outright representation
of the present.” Jameson continues his criticism with more detail, pointing to the
limitations of a representative form in a genre that lives from its innovations (qtd.
in Barnett 361). “Based on this criticism,” Barnett concludes, “if the cyberpunk
aesthetic is to be resuscitated, it must regain its Bohemian edge, return to its underground roots and present a more accurate depiction of the postmodern sublime that is multinational capitalism” (361). Consequently, what Barnett calls for
174
Gina Ziebell
are new ways to put the dark and dirty noir-inspired world of cyberpunk back in
touch with nowadays’ increasing tendencies towards world monopolies that have
become a real possibility instead of the culmination of mere imagination. It is such
a world that challenges traditional assumptions of selfhood and pushes it towards
postmodern fragmentation and decenteredness. And it is cyberpunk with its dangerous dystopian imaginings that is best fit to depict such changes. Yet despite
Barnett’s call for “resuscitation,” such a revival of cyberpunk did not happen until
the end of the 1990s when The Matrix (1999), directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski, caused a “resurgence of and improvement on the same cyberpunk aesthetic (only now in visual form)” that “brought a … smart postmodern aesthetic
back to cyberpunk” (Barnett 362).
This “postmodern aesthetic” is influenced heavily by some of the most
prominent aspects discussed in postmodern theory. As Veronica Hollinger summarizes: “In virtually every description of ‘the postmodern’ developed in the past
two decades, the increasingly pervasive influence of science and technology on
human life has been cited as one of its constitutive features” (232). The consequences of such an augmenting impact eventually lead to a questioning not only
of the role of technology in our daily lives, but also of the position humans hold
in society. Postmodern theory and art concern themselves with the technological
dominance over the human, and cyberpunk takes up a special stance in this context. As Barnett asserts: “[C]yberpunk is the most likely source for answers to
questions regarding the machine-human dynamic in multinational society” and
“concerns itself most directly with the implications of cyberspace, virtual reality,
and a host of technologies that place real human forms at risk of extinction” (360,
emphasis in the original).
What cyberpunk does is to show us a world where humans are no longer at
the center but where machines have come to take control instead (Barnett 367).
Moreover, cyberpunk fiction depicts a world where human subjectivity becomes
fragmented as it is no longer grounded in bodily experience. While bodily experience involves interactions of the human body with the physical reality, cyberpunk
introduces an interaction between mind and virtual reality in cyberspace. The
postmodern present is characterized by simulations, virtual realities, cyberspace
and simulacra which no longer require physicality to function. According to Bukatman, we are facing
a postmodern crisis of a body that remains central to the operations of advanced capitalism as sign, while it has become entirely superfluous as object.
… Simply put, the body is not a requisite for the survival of the technocratic system. In cyberpunk science fiction the body finds and occupies a
new space; a realm in which a control over the dataspheres of capitalism is
restored. Within the intersecting planes of cyberspace, the body is re-placed
and subject’s autonomy is resurrected. (16, emphasis in the original)
Why does the One Only Exist in Cyberspace?
175
It is cyberpunk science fiction, and as such also The Matrix, which addresses the
implications of this “technocratic system” for its human inhabitant. The film considers the “ontology of cyberspace” (Barnett 360) by taking the viewer into a
simulated, digital world where subjectivity can literally be put together out of data
fragments. The self is depicted as a construction, and we are in the course of the
movie introduced to a subject that no longer needs physicality and unity of self in
order to develop a sense of self-identity. Rather, we are presented with a subject
whose mind itself becomes embodied and defines itself through agency in an electronic (cyber)space. It is the example of the protagonist Neo that shows us this
development, and through him the movie reassures us that even in the Information Age of cyberspace and virtual reality, the human subject will in the end also
control this new spatiality.
Mr. Anderson and Reality: Identity and Physical Experience
Right from the beginning of The Matrix, the viewer gets the feeling that things are
not quite normal in this world – our world – as it is presented to him. Although
we recognize the tall buildings and rundown streets as any Western city by night
and the Agents with their dark suits and radio cables as the standard image of a
federal agent, there are some elements in this sequence that throw us off. It is not
only the ominous music which accompanies the opening of the first scene
through a set of numerical codes on a black screen, but also the following fight
and chase sequence of about five minutes where Trinity and the Agent perform
movements which seem impossible. Trinity is only later revealed as part of a rebel
group that wants to free humanity from the Matrix, the virtual reality they are
imprisoned in without their knowledge, while the Agent is introduced as a hunting
program encoded into the virtual reality to prevent its destruction. Even with the
suspension of disbelief, which the introduction asks us to perform, we are left in
the same situation the male protagonist is in when we are introduced to him in the
next scene. The setting is recognized as “our world,” despite the chase sequence
and the greenish filter which gives the shots a gloomy atmosphere, yet there is
something odd about it.
Consequently, this first sequence is important in more than one way. It not
only presents the technique of “bullet time,” which is central to the movie’s unprecedented aesthetics, but moreover it leads the viewer to a point where he or
she can immediately identify with the protagonist as he is introduced on his search
for an answer to explain this strange feeling he has about his world.
In a telling way, the male protagonist is first presented to us as a hacker who
goes by the alias Neo, and we get to know him as a person who likes to spend his
time in the electronic world of cyberspace. It is this activity which has led him to
the ultimate question that Morpheus, the rebel leader and Neo’s future mentor,
formulates for him: “What is the Matrix?” Yet not long after this encounter, our
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protagonist is revealed to have another identity, which Agent Smith describes as
that of “Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company,” leading a life in which he is firmly grounded in “reality” – paying taxes,
helping an old lady to take out her garbage. Despite his double life, Thomas
Anderson’s sense of self is clearly bound to a physical experience of the world,
even though he often works with computer programs and networks. He is presented to us as someone who uses – or of whom we, up until a certain point, believe he uses – his body to control his actions and, to a degree, his surroundings.
“The self, of course, is embodied” (56) is how Anthony Giddens begins a
section on “Body and Self” in his book Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in
the Late Modern Age (1991). For Giddens, this section is part of a query into ontological and existential issues that are of importance for a consideration of
(post)modern self-identity. Here, he not only describes self-identity as being based
on discursiveness (54), but also goes on to discuss the central role of the body for
the self in daily life. He specifically links the development of subjectivity to bodily
experience: “A child does not learn that it ‘has’ a body, because self-consciousness
emerges through bodily differentiation rather than the other way around” (56).
Modern subjectivity, according to Giddens, is built through interaction with the
world – meaning both objects and other people (56) – for which one needs a
body:
Reality is grasped through day-to-day praxis. The body is thus not simply an
‘entity’, but is experienced as a practical mode of coping with external situations and events. … To learn to become a competent agent … is to be able
to exert a continuous, and successful, monitoring of face and body. (56,
emphasis in the original)
This is how Neo’s identity is shown in this first part of the movie in which he,
along with the viewer, does not know that his “reality” is only the Matrix, a virtual
reality taking the shape of the world as it was in 1999 and to which every human
being is connected. The sense of self that is portrayed here works with the idea
that the subject can control his surroundings to a certain degree (follow the rabbit
or not, climb out the window or not), but not completely so. The subject is limited by such things as laws of nature and physical constraints – the Thomas
Anderson presented to us cannot jump from rooftop to rooftop to avoid the
Agents. At least one half of Neo’s double life is based on such assumptions. Paying taxes and taking out the landlady’s garbage are repeated actions that say something about who Thomas Anderson is since they are results of his agency in a
(supposed) reality, a self which he himself constructed.
All this is expressed by what Giddens concludes about the self in his considerations of existential questions: “Self-identity, in other words, is not something
that is just given, as a result of the continuities of the individual’s action-system,
but something that has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activi-
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ties of the individual” (52). Using these assumptions as starting point for the further development of Neo’s identity in the course of the movie, I will subsequently
focus on the protagonist’s loss of a subjectivity based in physicality, and furthermore examine the Construct and its importance for Neo in constructing a new
subjectivity.
Uploading and the Construct: Fragmentation and Dislocation
of the Subject
The viewer, just as curious as the protagonist, joins Neo on his path as he sets out
to find out what the Matrix is. We share his feelings of disbelief when he – and the
audience – finds himself in a world that despite all allusions to Alice in Wonderland
and The Wizard of Oz feels more like an inversion of wonderland than anything
else. The distorted camera angles, the pans and tilts shot from Neo’s point of view
in the cramped space of the Nebuchadnezzar convey a feeling of alienation which
we think he must be feeling in this ‘real’ reality outside the Matrix.
The shock Neo experiences after having been physically and mentally disconnected from the Matrix by the rebels, though, is not only that of learning that his
whole life so far has been an illusion, but also the loss of his identity. He was living in a virtual reality without resemblance to the reality that exists outside of it
and therefore the control over his seemingly physical surroundings was a lie. He
has held no control, no power of agency whatsoever – at least that is what it looks
like in the beginning. For someone whose sense of self for his whole life has been
based on the idea of physicality and a degree of control over concrete objects, this
is a disorienting blow. While this view presupposes a certain measure of physical
and geographical unity, these factors are now lost for Neo. About the place where
he lived he learns that it does not physically exist at all, and about his concrete
surroundings and own body he realizes that they have only been a simulation created by a machine. These realizations result in the “death” of Thomas Anderson –
that part of his double identity that has been grounded in factors now revealed as
non-existent. It is “Neo” who remains because this hacker part of his self has
mostly existed in cyberspace anyway.1
What follows now in The Matrix is not only a part that shows the training Neo
undergoes to be prepared to enter the Matrix as a sort of guerilla fighter, but also a
redefinition of his subjectivity which is closely connected to what he learns. Important for this process is what the crew calls “the Construct,” a “loading program,” as Morpheus explains to Neo when they first enter it after Neo has been
disconnected from the Matrix: “We can load anything from clothes, to weapons,
to training simulations. Anything we need.” Moreover, they can upload parts of
1
This might have to do with the fact that the name “Neo” was chosen by himself. Concerning
the relation between the act of naming and identity, see Ravichandran 34-35.
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themselves – or at the least that part which Morpheus calls the “residual selfimage.”
The Construct is introduced as a blank space where things can appear and
disappear at the will of someone who is controlling the upload from outside. We
also get to see it as a Japanese style dojo in which Neo and Morpheus train, as a
“jumping program,” as a simulation that looks like the Matrix and is filled with
rows and rows of weapons. Computer screens inside the hovercraft allow the crew
to observe what is happening inside the Construct. It is the operators who control
the make-up of the Construct and decide what to load – as Tank, the operator in
control of the Construct, tells Neo: “We are supposed to load all these operations
programs first, but this is some major boring shit. Why don’t we start with something a little fun?” In the Construct, Neo learns all the skills which allow him to
survive in the Matrix in his encounters with the Agents. It is in this space where
he first shows promise of being someone special when he fights Morpheus.
These points seem to be the basic features of the Construct as far as they are
explained in or can be inferred from the movie. Apart from these basic facts, the
role of the Construct for Neo’s redefinition of subjectivity is hard to point out. In
the following paragraphs, I will therefore attempt to examine the Construct’s
properties within the framework of my argument and to point out possible consequences for Neo’s identity.
When entering the Construct, the subject enters an electronic space just as if
being plugged into the Matrix since both are computer programs. This process
dislocates the subject not only in a geographical sense – because cyberspace is
everywhere and nowhere at once – but also concerning a fixed sense of selfidentity. As Bukatman writes:
Subject dislocation is enacted by a movement through an excruciatingly
technological, decentering spatiality. The site of origin of the subject passes
first outside the body and then inside the terminal. … [T]he subject is broken down in the zones of cyberspatial simulation, there to await its reconstitution amidst these fields of data. (180, emphasis in the original)
This explanation makes it clear that through subject dislocation, the self is removed from an actual space, such as the one which Thomas Anderson perceives
as “reality,” in which the body works as the center of agency. Instead, it becomes
located in cyberspace where the conditions for the construction of subjectivity are
different because cyberspace is not physical and as such denies the self a stable
reference point for its identity.
Yet it remains unclear to what extent being in the Construct has different
effects on the subject than being in the Matrix. Both are electronic spaces where
some outside force determines the subject’s surroundings so that the subject can
control them only to a certain degree, although this manipulation is different from
bodily control in physical reality. The Construct, though, might be different from
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the Matrix in that it is ultimately a human being who is in control of determining
the contents of the computer program, not a machine. Because of this it could
possibly be considered as a sort of in-between space between the Matrix and
physical reality – a humanitarian cyberspace. This idea of a cyberspace in which
humans are in control – as in opposition to the Matrix which is controlled by
machines – though, is connected strongly to the figure of the operator as someone
who delivers the objects and skills necessary for the protagonists to defeat the
Agents, and not to the properties of the Construct itself. Any characteristics of
human control could be linked back to the fact that the operators, who were born
outside the Matrix, are “one hundred percent pure, old-fashioned, home-grown
human.”
The fact that in the Construct Neo first catches a glimpse of his abilities as the
One prophesied to be able to control the Matrix as he wishes, gives this space a
degree of importance. Still, the actual impact of the Construct for the refashioning of his identity remains uncertain since it is both similar to the Matrix in
its technological properties and different from it as it is controlled by a human.
Plugging Into the Matrix: “Terminal Identity” and the Virtual
Subject
When Neo realizes that what he perceived as “reality” is nothing more than a
digitally constructed illusion, he has to come to terms with the fact that his body
has never been the center of agency as he thought it was. The only way for him to
rebuild a sense of self now lies in creating a routine, a continuity of actions in the
way Giddens remarks on the construction of self-identity (52). The Construct,
however, with its state in between actual space and cyberspace might give him a
first insight into the possibilities of fashioning a new identity for himself. In the
following paragraphs, I will examine what impact Neo’s entrance into the Matrix
has on his sense of self, the relation of his physical and his phenomenological
body, and his ability to act.
As Morpheus enters the Construct together with Neo to explain to him how
the Matrix works and what reality actually looks like, he describes the way the
machines use humans to create energy as “fusion.” This kind of combination is
usually termed “interface” today, defined as “the boundary of two bodies or
spaces,” or, as Bukatman writes, “as existing between a body and a space” (192,
emphasis in the original). In Terminal Identity, he argues that science fiction presents us with a new form of subject that overcomes this boundary between body
and space, or more precisely makes the boundary vanish. By fusing with technology, this new subject becomes able to occupy cyberspace (8-9).
This subject is characterized by what William S. Burroughs calls “terminal
identity”: “an unmistakably doubled articulation in which we find both the end of
the subject and a new subjectivity at the computer station or television screen”
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(Bukatman 9). The terminal identity is the end, the termination, of the sense of
subjectivity based on physical reality and geographical unity – the end of the embodied subject Thomas Anderson. On the other hand, this gives rise to the possibility of a subject dislocated from its physical form, one that exists in electronic
space, as Neo does in the Matrix.
“Virtual subject” is the term Bukatman uses to define this latter form, “a new
subject capable of inhabiting the bewildering and disembodied space of the electronic environment” (118):
[R]ecent SF frequently posits a reconception of the human and the ability
to interface with the new terminal experience – as in cyberpunk – and thus
a uniquely terminal space becomes a fundamental part of human (or posthuman) redefinition. … [W]hat is involved is a projection or transmission of the
human into ‘the infinite datascape’ and the concurrent construction of a
spatial simulacrum of the invisible circulation of information. These narratives literalize McLuhan’s vision of a prosthetic extension of the human
nervous system into the new fields of the electronic environment, granting
the process an important spatiality which represents a simultaneous grounding and
dislocating of human bodily experience. (118, emphasis in the original)
This projection into cyberspace is what happens to Neo. His consciousness is
connected to the technological data spheres of cyberspace, his “residual selfimage” is loaded and supplemented by skills, clothing and other necessities that
the operator can digitally create for him. But not everything about this cyberspatial
Neo is the result of data manipulation, since he also possesses his abilities as the
One which appear to be inherently his own. He loses his identity as Thomas
Anderson but fully inhabits that of “Neo” in the process of (re)constructing his
sense of self. His new sense of subjectivity is no longer located in a physical reality
and limited by the rules of the system. Instead he understands the fact that what
he sees is only an illusion which in the end allows him to at once see the image
created by the Matrix and the codes that operate behind it. This makes it possible
for him to manipulate the Matrix and thus work against its system.
By entering the electronic space, Neo gains a new sort of experience in that
(for him) it is no longer his physical body that “experiences” and connects him to
his surroundings and functions as center of his self-identity. Rather, his brain is
the new center of his experience as it sorts through the electrical signals sent to it
by the electronic system to create a surrounding phenomenal cyber-world: “Virtual reality represents an attempt to eliminate the interface between user and information – by ‘transforming data into environment’” (Bukatman 191-92). In a
similar fashion, Morpheus asks Neo in The Matrix: “What is real? How do you
define real? If you’re talking about what you feel, taste, smell or see, then real is
simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” When Neo is plugged into the
Matrix and his brain starts constructing an illusion of physical reality from the
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signals it receives, it is these “real” surroundings that allow the mind to become
the center of experience.
To be installed into such an apparatus would be to exist on two planes at
once: while one’s objective body would remain in the real world, one’s phenomenal body would be projected into the terminal reality. … [W]orld and
body comprise a continually modifying feedback loop, producing a terminal
identity without the terminal – a cybersubject. (Bukatman 187, emphasis in the
original)
The screen, which in today’s human-machine interface functions as frontier between physical and virtual reality (Bukatman 108), has therefore become nonexistent as border: human and machine merge directly by connecting human
nerves to electronic appliances. The construction of a new subject in electronic
space creates a new double existence, but not necessarily a double identity, since
the sense of subjectivity can be detached from physicality and be connected only
to the “phenomenal body,” as Bukatman calls it.
For Neo, it thus becomes possible to (re)fashion his new sense of self in electronic spaces such as the Construct and the Matrix, and still retain it even if he is
in physical reality. Yet the fact that in order to be able to enter this space he needs
to merge with a machine and enter a realm where technology seems to determine
his surroundings raises a problem of control. If identity in one of its senses means
“an agency,” as Ravichandran (6) has pointed out, and according to Giddens (52),
the individual’s actions are important for creating and retaining it, then it is necessary for the subject to have a certain degree of control which the virtual reality
does not offer. In the next section, I will examine this problem in further detail.
Controlling the Matrix: The Question of Agency in Electronic
Space
What The Matrix does is creating for us a visible version of electronic space –
something that is usually invisible to us. Considering this connection between
phenomenology and science fiction, Bukatman writes:
A phenomenology of science fiction helps us to understand the strategies
of these works: specifically, their attempt to redefine the imperceptible (and
therefore absent to consciousness) realms of the electronic era in terms of
the physically and perceptually familiar. The motive is to render the electronic fields present to consciousness – to turn them into phenomena –
and therefore susceptible to human intention. (117)
The Matrix offers a similar link between seeing and control. Firstly, the language used to talk about the features of the Matrix often revolves around the act
of seeing: Trinity tells Neo he has “to see it to believe it,” the Agents had their
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“eye on [him] for some time,” Morpheus tells him the Matrix is “the world that
has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Secondly, it is Neo’s
ability to “simultaneously see the virtual reality of the Matrix, the underlying code
that writes and informs it, the bodies that are confined by it, the minds that are
controlled by it, and the machines that generate it” (Barnett 369) that characterizes
him as the One. Seeing is the sense that is singled out in the movie, and to a certain degree this is because it is a science fiction movie which relies heavily on special effects like bullet time to make visible the electronic space of the Matrix, to
show us something we never perceived before. Moreover, the sense of seeing is
linked closely with agency, since being conscious of a phenomenon enables us to
react to it and, to a degree, shape it as we wish. “The human is inserted into the
terminal space as a pure, totalizing, gaze,” Bukatman summarizes. “The boundaries of the screen are eradicated, and the cyberscopic field becomes fully phenomenal, susceptible to human vision and action” (136).
With the phenomenological perception of the electronic fields comes a hitherto unseen form of body movement which is only possible in this particular
space. What Bukatman says about William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) in this
context is valid for The Matrix as well:
The spatiality of Neuromancer exists to permit bodily mobility and, hence,
subject definition. The human becomes the dramatic center, the active
agent … . [T]he phenomenology of perception is transformed into a transcendent valuation of human experience and its ‘logical’ consequent, human control. (206)
Mobility and perception, the two aspects of subjectivity named here, are according
to Bukatman usually connected to a lived-body (207), but here they become characteristics of the “phenomenal body” of electronic space, the body-image generated by the mind, or the “residual self-image, the mental projection of your electronic self,” as it is called in The Matrix. This becomes the reason why the
simultaneous existence on two levels as experienced by someone who enters the
Matrix is meaningless for subject definition. As Bukatman explains: “Thus, the
duality between mind and body is superseded in a new formation that presents the
mind as itself embodied. The body, here, exists only in phenomenological terms: it
perceives and it moves” (208, emphasis in the original). The fact that the mind is
detached from the physical body is presented as a gain of strength for the subject
in the movie: not only does the phenomenal body in the Matrix offer a range of
movements which would not be possible with one’s actual body, but in this space
Neo eventually acquires, in Morpheus’s terms, the ability to “change what he
wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit,” he has absolute control.
While such an obsolescence of the physical body is sometimes considered as
the ultimate form of the death of the subject (as e.g. in Barnett 369), The Matrix
instead presents it as the ultimate empowering of the subject. The new strength
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and power of agency gained by entering the virtual reality of the Matrix serve as
elements for constructing a new sense of subjectivity in that they allow for the
subject’s control over its actions. Although this is only achieved through a merging of the human with technology, it is the human, i.e. Neo, who comes out on
top in this fusion.2 Thus, despite the movie’s celebration of the connection between human and technology and the body’s devaluation, it still carries an affirmation of human agency and even supremacy. Therefore, it is also necessary that
Neo is revealed as the One.
Neo is the center of the audience’s focus during The Matrix’s progression.
This is not only because he is the protagonist, but mostly due to the fact that he is
the one the viewer can best connect to since he is the only crew member to go
through the painstaking process of revelation, alienation and redetermination of
who he is in a new, strange world. He is the Alice or Dorothy we follow to accommodate to the unfamiliar wonderland we have been thrust into right alongside
him.
Furthermore, he is also the only member of the crew to eventually completely
master the Matrix, the only one with ultimate control over the spatiality of this
virtual reality. With this development, the movie reassures us that even in a time
when technology becomes more and more important and the interface between
human and machine becomes more and more blurred and malleable, the human
will be the one to come out on top. He will be the master of technology in the
end, even though in the beginning it seemed to be the machines that had humanity completely subdued and mastered.
Only by establishing Neo as the powerful figure of the One can The Matrix
offer an empowered version of the human mind, one that does not even need a
body anymore to achieve agency. With this elevation of the mind, the movie
solves the problem of identity that has been raised with the simultaneous obsolescence of the human body and the human self-identity based on geographic unity,
mobility and agency that presupposes bodily control. All this, though, is only possible as long as Neo is the One who has the power to “remake the Matrix as he
saw fit,” for otherwise he would only be another victim of the machines’ power so
that the movie’s message about the future of the human subject would be a pessimistic one instead. By allowing Neo to assume the role of the One, though, the
movie follows a cyberpunk tradition of an empowering dissolution of the body
(Bukatman 21) that simultaneously elevates the status of the non-physical mind.
2
For an analysis on similar instances in written science fiction, see Bukatman 208.
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Works Cited
Barnett, P. Chad. “Reviving Cyberpunk: (Re)Constructing the Subject and Mapping
Cyberspace in the Wachowski Brothers’ Film The Matrix.” Extrapolation 41.4
(2000): 359-74. Print.
Bould, Mark. “Cyberpunk.“ A Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. David Seed. Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2005. 217-31. Print.
Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993. Print.
Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.
Cambridge: Polity P, 1991. Print.
Hollinger, Veronica. “Science Fiction and Postmodernism.” A Companion to Science
Fiction. Ed. David Seed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 232-47. Print.
Landon, Brooks. The Aesthetics of Ambivalence: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of
Electronic (Re)Production. Westport, CO: Greenwood Press, 1992. Print.
Ravichandran, T. Postmodern Identity. Jaipur: RBSA Publishers, 2007. Print.
The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Perf. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss. Warner Home Video, 1999. DVD.
Epilogue
Eric S. Rabkin
The Creature from Brooklyn:
My Life and Science Fiction Film
Even today, fifty-six years later, I remember perching forward on the sticky, wornvelvet seats of the dark Beverly Theater on Church Avenue near my family’s
apartment in Brooklyn, New York, captivated during a shivery Saturday matinee,
my eyes wide and mouth slack in amazement as The Creature From the Black
Lagoon crept aboard a small diesel-powered river boat somewhere in the South
American jungle and then, suddenly, snatched the bathing-suited beauty on deck,
leaping with her into the murky deep. I can still see the Gill-Man, a prehistoric
monster prodded into our world by self-righteous modern science, powering
down into the water with one arm while clasping the woman’s waist with another,
dragging her clothed but utterly visible body ever further from air and light and
toward me. Sitting in the chilly dark myself, it was stunning. I didn’t know then
that this was a “B” movie, cobbled together on a low-brow budget, a doublefeature filler the calculating studios produced to conjure a few more coins from
the hands of children. The monster’s rubber suit with its silly scales and webbed
hands and feet was obviously a movie prop, but so what? That’s what I wanted,
movies! Adventure! Excitement! Bathing beauties in peril! I didn’t know then – as
the trailer must have announced the week before, as it still does on the Internet –
that I was watching “the most amazing underwater photography that the screen
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has ever known!” in this “strangest of all science fiction adventures!” I was eight
and all I knew was that this was wonderful, and, somehow, deep down, that “they
want our women.” Strangely, “they” included me. If there was fear here, it was a
fear I coveted because something deep and prehistoric in me wanted “their”
women, too. Surely I wasn’t the brainy, broad-chested scientist who strove to keep
the “girl” (that’s what beautiful women were called back then) to himself. Honestly, although it is hardly possible, I remember myself being alone in the theater. I
know I don’t remember how the movie ended. But I do remember the Gill-Man
first becoming enamored of the bathing beauty, a fact recorded wordlessly by an
underwater camera shooting up to show her swimming at the surface, her vibrant
body half in and half out of the flowing river (of time?) and him swimming on his
back six feet below her, looking up to her, matching her movements, following
along fully immersed and utterly unseen by her. Like me in the theater. Without
knowing it, I must have seen my own future dimly in that watery ballet, a future of
unrecognized longing, struggling by stealth and desire against those strong, smart
men who clearly owned the world, or at least the dry and lighted world, that I was
expected someday to inhabit.
I remember coming out of the theater and, for a long, long moment, standing
painfully blinded on the sidewalk in the overpowering sunlight.
I was very lucky. As I grew up, Hollywood seemed always to give me the science fiction movies I needed. In one sense, this is a fortuitous consequence of the
development of cinema technology. Just as my tastes jaded, the magic factory
always concocted new wonders. (Now that I think of it, I saw Jack Arnold’s The
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) in old-fashioned 3D, wearing cardboard eyeglasses that scratched the bridge of my nose. Did the novelty of that ersatz reality,
and not the longing for the girl, make the movie so memorable? At this remove, I
can only surmise that both ersatz realities worked together to allow me a scarysafe glimpse of my future.) But more than the technological development, this
parallelism between my and the movies’ growing up reflects both historical happenstance and the demographic fact that I was born at the leading edge of the
post-World War II Baby Boom, a member of the most sought market ever. Nonetheless, I still think, this parallelism was also personal. Lucky, sure, but still personal.
A curious but important fact of cinema history is that virtually every major
technological development has its first defining application either in science fiction or in fantasy, the larger category that includes science fiction. Sound, for example, arrives in the 1920’s. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927, is often called the
first talkie, because, indeed, it was the first theatrically-released movie with recorded dialogue. However, Don Juan in 1926 had recorded music, so The Jazz
Singer wasn’t the first sound movie. The first movie to be all sound – sound effects, music, and dialogue all captured at the studio and recreated in the theater,
was Steamboat Willie, the 1928 Disney cartoon starring a chipper anthropomorphic
The Creature from Brooklyn
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mouse who would later be known as Mickey. And if a mouse piloting a river boat
isn’t exactly science fiction in the narrowest sense, it is certainly fantasy. It seems
to me now that there is an important historical line, one revealing a crucial shift in
American culture, between the happy man-mouse piloting Disney’s riverboat and
the Gill-Man sneaking aboard Jack Arnold’s.
Georges Méliès gave us the first narrative film in color, special hand-painted
private prints of his A Trip to the Moon (1902), very loosely based on the Jules
Verne novel; however, the use of color not as mere novelty but as a way to explore the theme of a commercial film found its defining moment in 1939 when
The Wizard of Oz contrasted the mundane panchromatic sepiatone world of Kansas with the vivid Technicolor world of Oz. (This powerful, thematic use of panchromatic versus full color recurs, perhaps most notably in the red coat in
Schindler’s List in 1993 and in the contrast between drab and vivid worlds in Pleasantville in 1998.) Interestingly, while Oz captivates us visually, the explicit message
of the movie is that “there’s no place like home.” Color – the heightened world of
the Hollywood movie – is a fine place to visit, but its real value, the film implies, is
in teaching us that the best place to live is the real world. Color stands for imagination, which is best valued for its use in training us to deal with the here and
now. Given the Great Depression and the palpable approach of war in 1939, this
practical turn made sense. And that the pluck of a little girl could galvanize a motley collection of failures to withstand the army of darkness, well, that gave hope.
Once armed with hope, Dorothy (her name means “gift of God”) could return to
the American heartland and we viewers to the world outside the theater. The Wizard of Oz is certainly a fantasy, and, given the rusty plight of the Tin Man, the inevitable drug effects of the field of poppies, the mechanized beauty parlors of Oz,
the Wizard’s mechanical self-projection, the role of hot air balloons, and so on,
the film arguably fits also within the narrower genre called science fiction.
At the end of the 19th century, Méliès also gave us perhaps the earliest theatrical use of time-lapse photography, the trick wherein a scene is recorded by a
slowed down camera so that when the film is played back at normal speed, the
motion appears very fast. We see this often in nature films with clouds racing
across the sky or flowers budding in seconds. But perhaps the defining narrative
use of time-lapse photography is Nosferatu, F. W. Murnau’s classic 1922 version of
Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). Here the spectral horses flash across the landscape and the slow-moving demon occasionally darts from one location to another thanks to this technology.
The Shüfftan process for back projection that allowed the seamless integration
of filmed miniatures into the filming of actors was first used in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), a work that for many reasons is also a high-water mark in science
fiction film.
And so on from one technology to another.
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But to return to 3D: although in various ways it had been used as a curiosity as
early as the 1890s, its first commercially successful use was in a 1952 adventure
movie, based on historical fact, call Bwana Devil. That film has not lasted. But its
success motivated investment in House of Wax, a 1952 film that began Vincent
Price’s decades-long career in horror and science fiction and that also gave most
audiences their first experience of stereophonic sound.
The movies that showcased new technologies were, repeatedly fantasy and,
more narrowly, science fiction. Look at the list of Oscar winners for Visual Effects (previously known as Special Effects). The list since World War II includes
Mighty Joe Young (award received in 1949), Destination Moon (1950), When Worlds
Collide (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), The Time Machine (1960), Fantastic Voyage (1966), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), both King Kong and Logan’s Run (1976),
Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978), Alien (1979), Cocoon (1985), Jurassic Park (1993),
The Matrix (1999), and, depending on how one defines the genre, nearly a dozen
and a half others. All three nominees currently before the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences are unequivocally science fiction (Avatar, District 9, and
Star Trek). In other words, the history of film is to an important extent a history of
science fiction film. To say that I – along with millions upon millions of others –
grew up with the movies is to say that I grew up with science fiction film. In some
ways film itself is science fiction.
Overt science fiction film begins with Méliès. Thomas Edison’s Edison Films
released a version of Frankenstein in 1910. But the melodramatic world of the Saturday matinee was particularly congenial to science fiction. As late as my childhood in the 1950s, theater managers still padded out their playbills with the episodes of Flash Gordon (first serialized in 1936), Buck Rogers (1939), Captain Marvel
(1941), King of the Rocket Men (1949), and so on. But while the serials were fun,
nostalgic in a way even though I knew that they couldn’t really represent my own
memories, the feature films were the more important.
In 1954, even at eight, I was thoroughly aware that we (that is “America,” but
America seemed like “we” to me) had just come through the Korean War. We
(that is, the public, and particularly the young) had been told that, as in World War
II, we had won; however, it didn’t seem to me (or, for that matter, to my friends
in Brooklyn) that we had. Although we couldn’t actually remember World War II,
its veterans walked among us, many of them our actual parents. Germany had
surrendered. Japan had surrendered. Korea – North Korea – had not surrendered.
Where was the decisive capitulation that signaled security for “our way of life”?
Sitting on the bench in the neighborhood playground, as children will, I tried
on philosophy with my friends. How would we know when we were men? Not
just pubic – that part was easy enough – but men? Was it ever right to lie, like
when a friend’s mother asked if he were really with you when you knew he was off
doing something she didn’t want but you and your friend thought was just fine,
like reading borrowed comic books. Maturity, truth, loyalty: these were big issues.
191
And many of our big issues included science and technology. We lived on a busy
street. Auto accidents happened all the time. I heard sirens – “someone’s having a
bad day,” my father would say with knowing sadness – every night in Brooklyn.
Were cars really just wonderful or scary, too? Maybe even wrong, like the atom
bomb. Sure, it ended the war and saved lives, even Japanese lives, one of us would
say, but does anyone have the right to do that to other human beings? The war
would have ended soon anyway, someone else would reply. We shouldn’t have
dropped the bomb. How can you know? You can’t. So how can you make a decision, a life-or-death decision, and do it for someone else? You just have to.
We wrestled with those questions, trying on philosophy. It wasn’t a perfect fit,
but we felt that, somehow, we had to grow into it.
Godzilla helped.
In Godzilla (1954), the monster is released by the bomb of a Japanese scientist
(read Pearl Harbor) and it stomps across Tokyo (read Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
until an American journalist (read ordinary G.I.) forces the creature back out to
sea (read suppression but not destruction) so the American can end the movie in
the company of the scientist’s beautiful, rescued young assistant (read military
occupation fostering democracy). If I had thought about it at the time, I would
have been grateful that a Japanese filmmaker had provided me with this comforting justification for American action, albeit not a thoroughly comforting view
because that filmmaker and I and all the world knew that, despite the bombing of
Pearl Harbor, using atomic bombs was a decision, a fraught decision, one that, like
the Korean conflict, could be at best, suppressed. Godzilla was still out there,
somewhere, under the waves.
Beginning in 1950s, it seems to me that science fiction film has gone through
three roughly defined phases. The first phase dealt most importantly with fear. In
Them! (1954), American atom bomb tests drive the mutation of ants into huge
creatures capable of chewing through houses. Their utter commitment to their
own collective purpose and their utter lack of individuality make Them perfect
metaphors for the Communists Americans feared. When Their nest is discovered
beneath Los Angeles, we have a perverse confirmation of Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s witch-hunting. The film industry, unbeknownst to many of us, the
film seems to imply, has mutated and is our enemy. Fortunately, the actor who
will come to play Sheriff Matt Dillon on the long-running television series Gunsmoke (James Arness), destroys Their eggs with flamethrowers and makes America
safe again. But just for that one movie.
In Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the pods are aliens from the sky but they
become us – and then replace us – by reforming themselves into our simulacra in
our basements while we sleep. Again, the notion that the enemy is single-minded
both in purpose and absence of individuality is key. Living in Eisenhower’s America, where “conformity” was an issue and cookie-cutter suburbia was burgeoning,
Don Siegel’s film resonated even to my then ten-year old mind.
192
Eric S. Rabkin
Not all fears were political. Although one often hears that American monster
films of the ‘50s were xenophobic, that is too simple a statement. The Gill-Man
was not released or created by a bomb but by unbridled curiosity, and he represented not an implacable destructive force but a thwarted desire for love. The fear
that happiness would elude one, that the responsibilities of adulthood would
overwhelm one, this, too, characterized those “B” movies. In The Fly (1958), the
scientist who seeks to better the world by inventing a teleportation device winds
up half-fly and trapped in a spider’s web. Even a well intended search for new
knowledge can destroy one. That is only “natural,” as the spider web image suggests. But by the time I saw The Fly, I was twelve, and biologically destined to seek
new knowledge. This was much scarier than The Creature From the Black Lagoon.
Between Steamboat Willie, the mouse who has no trouble piloting the riverboat in 1928 to the Gill-Man who can’t stay more than a moment on the riverboat
in 1954, America had changed. The expansive self-confidence of Willy, who so
often happily whistles, is ground down by the Great Depression and a fear of war
that led America to widespread isolationism. But even, in America’s mind, having
won the war, we could not return to that same cheerful anticipation. We knew
that we had unleashed something terrible – like millions of others, I practiced
“duck and cover” A-bomb drills in school – and we knew that our very virtues,
our technological prowess and willingness to attack, reflected potentially dangerous traits deep within us, traits that might be aroused for the best of reasons –
love, for example – but might only show us to be monsters.
It is little wonder, then, that as the war receded in memory and America grew
in strength, movies that dealt with such fears fell away.
Then, after a comparative dry spell, at the end of the 1960s, science fiction
film returned and got arty. Instead of “B” movies with low budgets albeit sometimes high concepts, we got philosophical meditations that, beginning with Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), were often gorgeous to watch. The last
image of that film, of the Star Child in its celestial amnion hovering in space above
the Earth, is haunting. Where will it lead? The movie doesn’t say, but the last line
of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel of the same name is, “But he would think of something.”
For a while, these “A” budget science fiction films, such as Silent Running
(1972) and Blade Runner (1982), films that both look good and prompt us to think,
dominated American science fiction and American science fiction dominated
world science fiction. Soylent Green (1973), in which overpopulation has driven
people – appropriately shielded by ignorance – to eat people, asks a simple literal
but compelling philosophical question. In some sense, that serious phase has continued, visible in movies like Minority Report (2002).
A third phase, however, one that now runs alongside the second, may be said
to have begun in the late ‘70s with Star Wars (1977). Here we took the good looks
of the second phase and reached all the way back to the melodramatic serials of
193
the 30’s and 40’s. While some science fiction films continued to raise questions,
like Altered States (1980) and Brazil (1985), others grabbed ever more of the market
share by making visually splendid fairy tales. Given the self-confidence and egotism of America, despite the humbling Viet Nam experience, in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and
‘90s it is small wonder that films confirming what people hoped but memory tarnished found an audience. But by then I was too old. I was perfectly happy to
watch “bullet time” played out in the gorgeous Matrix movies (starting in 1999),
but that sort of simplicity seemed to me “childish things” which I didn’t have to
be asked to “put away.” These films were good for a couple of hours, for me, but,
for me, not much more.
And then I was honored to be asked by Kathleen Loock and Sonja Georgi, at
Frank Kelleter’s suggestion, to give the keynote talk at an undergraduate conference in Göttingen, Germany, in the summer of 2009. Kathleen and Sonja’s students, at Göttingen and Siegen respectively, had studied “American Science Fiction Film” focusing on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soylent
Green, Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Minority Report. I had the opportunity not
merely to address this conference but to spend three days with the organizers and
the student presenters. They were marvelous: smart, generous, thoughtful, full of
hope and high spirits. I admired their scholarly efforts, learned something from
each presentation, and learned enormously from them collectively about life for
them today, and where American science fiction fits not in America but in their
world. But I was surprised that in all these close readings of individual films, of
the motives behind them and the system of production that created them, no
mention was made of the widespread notion that, to a significant degree, Hollywood is a community marked by Jews. Despite these wonderful students’ extended and collective attention to this group of six films and despite individual
students’ attention to individual films, here are some facts, potentially relevant to
film analysis, that went unsaid:
Don Siegel, director of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, was Jewish.
Stanley Kubrick, director of 2001: A Space Odyssey was Jewish.
Richard Fleischer, director of Soylent Green, and Edward G. Robinson, who
played Fleischer’s wise old man character, were Jewish.
And Stephen Spielberg, director of Minority Report (and Schindler’s List), is Jewish.
But the wonderful young people I met in Göttingen did not seem to look back
to see The Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an echo of Hitler Youth informing on
their families and neighbors or the factories of Soylent Green as related to the crematoria of their grandparents’ youth or the totalitarian illusions fostered by the
machines in The Matrix as akin to Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda factory or Minority Report as censorship in the name of a fascist state. These modern German
young adults, who certainly are fully aware of those matters of their own national
194
Eric S. Rabkin
identity, in reading American culture, even American culture of the 1950s, did not
address these fearful parallels. Why not?
Consider the typical American response to Them! at its release in 1954 and
even thereafter. The recency of the McCarthy witch hunts and the threat of Soviet
Communism with its explicitly imperialist ideology and atomic weapons made
interpretation easy. But those immensely strong, suddenly destructive, six-foot tall,
black ants, breeding under Los Angeles, arguably resonated so powerfully because
they also tapped into America’s constant, albeit often unconscious, awareness of
racial tension. Ants, the archetypes of mindless industriousness, could have been
seen just as easily as African American workers, commodified by white-owned
industry, yet lurking, always near Anglo-America, often unnoticed, potentially
violent. 1954 was, after all, the year of the Supreme Court’s landmark racial integration case, Brown v. Board of Education, and in some sense the explosive opening
of the modern Civil Rights movement. Yet despite that, other, more consciously
pressing matters, matters that had been more recently terrifying and more widely
discussed, took up most of the interpretative space and motivated the most
searching discussions that followed from this film. As much as race was a constant
question in Americans’ mind then (and still today), it was not what the film
seemed most pressingly about, and only becomes so when explicitly raised.
Among those German youths whom I listened to and learned from, the Nazi
past is also, without doubt, widely felt, but it seems that, unless explicitly raised,
other issues – today’s issues – seem more pressing. Science fiction film, it seems,
works so well for these engaged young adults right now precisely because science
fiction film, in its makers, viewers, and implications, is no longer particularly
American but has become just science fiction film, because, as those students
proved, it is worldwide and trains us to look, feel, think, appreciate, and perhaps
improve the world we share right now, and the one we all will have to share tomorrow. For me, because of those students, both what they did say and what they
did not say, I have a renewed faith in my life in science fiction film. Vielen Dank.
List of Contributors
The Editors
SONJA GEORGI is lecturer in American Studies at the Johannes GutenbergUniversity Mainz. She received a Master’s degree in American Studies, Applied
Linguistics and Economics from the University of Siegen and has recently completed her dissertation on Bodies and/as Technology: Counter-Discourses on Ethnicity and
Globalization in the Works of Alejandro Morales, Larissa Lai and Nalo Hopkinson. Her
fields of interest include Science Fiction, Ethnic Studies, and African American
Literature.
KATHLEEN LOOCK is a member of the American Studies Program at the University of Göttingen, where she is writing her Ph.D. thesis on the ethnicization of
Christopher Columbus in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United
States. She is currently co-editing the essay collection Remake | Remodel: New Perspectives on Film Remakes, Adaptations, and Fan Productions with Constantine Verevis
from Monash University (Australia).
Special Contributor
ERIC S. RABKIN is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. His many publications include Mars: A Tour of the Human
Imagination and The Fantastic in Literature. His current research includes the Genre
Evolution Project which, among other matters, studies American Science Fiction
short stories within culture considered as a complex adaptive system.
The Contributors
SOLVEIG BURFEIND studies Italian and American Studies at the University of
Göttingen and is currently writing her bachelor thesis in American literature focusing on motherhood and selfhood in Toni Morrison and Kate Chopin. She will
continue with a master in European Studies.
DENNIS EDELMANN is a student of English and German language and literature
at the University of Göttingen. In his research, he focuses mainly on literary, culture and media theory.
MORITZ EMMELMANN is a student of English Philology and Protestant Theology
at the University of Göttingen. His research interests include American modernist
196
literature, systematic theology of the twentieth century, religious education theory
and theory of religious education.
NIKLAS FRANZEN was born in 1988 in Duisburg (Germany). He studies English
Philology and Political Science at the University of Göttingen. His major interests
of study are Media Studies and Marxist Theories.
FABIAN GRUMBRECHT has studied American Studies and German Philology at
the University of Göttingen since 2007. His research interests include the representations of stereotypes in American popular culture portrayed in the media and
literature of the twentieth century as well as polemical forms of language used in
(everyday) communication situations.
DENNIS KOGEL is a BA student of Literary, Cultural and Media Studies at the
University of Siegen and a freelance music journalist. He mainly works in the field
of gender and popular (especially web) culture.
MANFRED ALEXANDER MÜLLER is a student of English Philology and History at
the University of Göttingen. His current research interests focus on Post-colonial
literature and modern movie adaptations of Shakespeare’s works.
JÖRN PIONTEK is currently studying English Philology and General Linguistics at
the University of Göttingen. Although he usually focuses on linguistics, he is also
interested in contemporary literature, film and pop culture as well as in learning
new languages.
IRIS SCHÄFER is a BA student of Literary, Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Siegen and is mostly interested in Gender- and Game Studies. Her current project is an investigation of Nintendo’s discovery of the female gaming market.
STEFANIE SCHWARZ has been a student of English Philology and Political Science
at the University of Göttingen since 2008. Her research interests include American
literature and culture of the twentieth century and especially of the Cold War era,
as well as medieval literature and its modern adaptations, with a special focus on
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
PHILIPP STÜCKRATH is a student of English Philology and History at the University of Göttingen. His research interests focus mainly on American literature and
culture as well as German contemporary history since 1945. He is currently writing his bachelor thesis on the victim-offender relationship with regard to the work
197
of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) in the German Democratic Republic
(GDR).
BENJAMIN RYAN ULONSKA (*1986) studied Literary, Cultural and Media Studies
(English/German) at the University of Siegen. As an exchange student at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, he focused on Drama and Screen
Production. His research priorities are Digital Video Production, Media Management, Horror and Gender Studies
GINA ZIEBELL has been a student of American Studies and Portuguese at the
University of Göttingen since 2007. Her research interest lies with questions of
identity, early American Gothic literature, and Science Fiction films.
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Since its beginnings, science fiction has served as an intellectual playground where pressing issues such as scientific and
technological progress, population growth, nuclear power, environmental protection, or genetic engineering have been
projected onto different times and spaces in order to warn about inherent dangers, offer solutions, or to simply speculate
about and experiment with the future. In the summer term of 2009, students from the University of Göttingen and the
University of Siegen participated in two parallel courses entitled “Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks: American Science
Fiction Film from the 1950s to the Present” and met for an undergraduate conference in Göttingen where they presented
and discussed their research on American science fiction film together with Eric S. Rabkin, professor at the University of
Michigan (USA) and an international expert in the field. The result of this project is the present volume of twelve student
essays that were first presented at the conference, and then selected and revised for publication. Considering science
fiction film as an essential element of American popular culture, the essays analyze and discuss the films Invasion of
the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968), Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973), The
Matrix (Wachowski, 1999), and Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002) against the background of social, political, cultural,
and/or ecological developments in their contemporary U.S. societies. The introductory essay outlines the theoretical,
methodological, and didactic considerations that informed the planning and teaching processes of the course format
and the conference. The collection also features an autobiographical essay by Eric S. Rabkin in which he reflects on his
personal experiences and lifelong fascination with science fiction films.
Student Essays on American Science Fiction Film
Göttinger Schriften zur Englischen Philologie
Band 5
Sonja Georgi and Kathleen Loock (eds.) Of Body Snatchers and Cyberpunks
2011
ISBN: 978-3-941875-91-3
ISSN: 1868-3878

Of body snatchers and cyberpunks - Georg-August

Transcription

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